Studio Four8 discusses a few overlooked things you can do to give your home greater curb appeal.
Curb Appeal | What Can You Do to Make Your Home Stand Out
Transcription:
Hey folks, it’s Studio Four8 with a video about: curb appeal. It’s that time of year some sellers are getting ready to come to the market and we want to get across to you just a few items that we think a lot of folks overlook when they get their homes ready to bring to the market. Curb appeal is a huge factor, you can never make another first impression. Right, Jeffrey? Right, were my props a give away, Todd? Well they help. No it’s too true, we all know from having buyer’s in our cars when you pull up to the house the buyers are already starting to assess things.
Gardening
So we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that are maybe obvious to everyone, maybe not so obvious to everyone. I’m going to talk a quick minute about the gardening part. We all know that mulch sets a really nice table, it’s a beautiful blanket to put out. So you’re going to want to do that. You want the grass cut, you want the edges also done after you cut the grass. Bright flowers when you’re in a spring climate, that’s great, it really pops. One of the things I find that people don’t routinely recognize: our hedge rows. Hedge rows in front of the house, they kind of stick up and oftentimes they come up halfway up the window. This is not what you want, what you want to do is you want to trim those back to just below the lower sill of the window. Why this is especially important is the higher your house sits up, the shorter it looks, because the hedges will start to creep up in front of the window. It’s also not the best thing to look out at from the vantage point of the inside. So get your hedge trimmer, get your pruners, and get those hedge rows down.
The Importance of Lighting
Those hedges cut down light coming into your home, which not only doesn’t look good from the inside but it’s not going to help you for photos. What also can help, our screens. Window screens cut down on the amount of light coming into your home. From the outside, your shiny windows can look kind of matte and dingy, even if they are perfectly new and clean. Get rid of the window screens, clean up the windows, everything is going to look a lot brighter from the inside. From the outside it’s going to help your home look a little bit more attractive. Same thing goes for any outside type lighting features that you have. If you’ve got sconces or anything else out in front of the garage, next to the front door, make sure they’re clean. Make sure you’ve got new matching light bulbs.
New Perspective
Sometimes we overlook these as homeowners who stop seeing your house the way a buyer might see it. So a piece of advice has to drive up to your home, try to see it from a new perspective or the perspective of a purchaser. Walk around the outside. Walk up to the front door, does your front door need paint? So you need to replace some hardware that maybe doesn’t open very easily or is flaking or peeling? Do you need a new door mat? Just his little details, get the cobwebs out, get the bird’s nest down, walk around to the back of the house. What is the buyer going to see when they get out there? Are they going to see toys scattered all over the place? Are they going to see garden tools rotting under your deck? Old piles of wood? Again, see that fresh perspective. You want to stage the exterior of your home no less than you were the interior of your home.
Gross Gutters
When folks are approaching that front door and they’re coming from the street to the driveway up to the front door, let’s take a look at those gutters. Like gutter gardens- they’re not in vogue. I don’t know if they ever have been. So let’s make sure that in the spring time and in the fall the trees are giving off a whole bunch of stuff like seedlings, flower petals, stuff like that. Let’s make sure our gutters don’t hold on to those items. Get someone up there either with a powerhouse or someone with a ladder to scoop all of that stuff out and just get it out of there. Again, the idea here is that that first impression is gorgeous, it’s beautiful, its a reflection of what folks will experience when they come inside your home.
Well this is Studio Four8 just with a few reminders to folks who are thinking about getting their homes ready for sale. Curb appeal is a huge point, we wanted to highlight some of the topics folks might overlook because we live in our homes and we don’t necessarily see these items.