Curb Appeal! Home Sellers, You Only Get One Glance to Make an Impression

Every home seller wants two things: a quick sale at the highest possible price. Neither of those desires is unreasonable, but in order to achieve those goals, you'll need to do a few things to make your home more saleable and different from your competition--all the other homes for sale in your neighborhood and price range.

Curb Appeal

First, look at the outside of your home, since that's what prospective buyers will see first. If you've ever bought a home, you know that you passed up potential homes simply because they looked shabby and unkempt from the street. It's just a quirk of human nature that makes a person think that if a home looks bad from the street, it will be just as bad on the inside--so don't let your home make a negative impression on the outside.

Keep the lawn and landscaping as well-manicured as possible. Keep perennials looking good, and if possible, plant some nice-looking annual flowers to dress up the appearance of your home. Make sure your front door creates a warm, inviting feeling. If it needs a coat of paint, do it. Paint is cheap, and the rewards will be worth the effort.

You don't have to spend a huge amount of money to make your house appealing to potential buyers. However, as the old saying goes: you only get one opportunity to make a good first impression. So walk around your house, inside and out, and try to look at it as if it's the first time you've ever seen it. What things do you see that would make a less-than-favorable impression on YOU if you were looking at them for the first time? Those are the things you want to address--long before the first potential buyers pull up in front of your home.

Copyright © 2006 Jeanette J. Fisher

Jeanette Fisher, interior design instructor, helps home sellers with color psychology to make their homes more saleable. She offers FREE Home Staging Information. Jeanette teaches home sellers FIVE ways to get more money from their home sale. http://sellfast.info


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