5 Renovations That Can Transform a Property Before It Goes on the Market
Ask a vendor what they plan to fix before listing and the answer is often too ambitious.
A loft conversion won’t be finished in time, and it rarely pays back on a quick sale. The changes that actually move a listing are smaller and cheaper, and they show up in the photos.
Here are five fixes worth putting to your vendors.
In most rooms, the floor is the largest surface in shot, but one sellers rarely put on their pre-sale list.
Plenty of Victorian and Edwardian terraces have original pine boards or oak parquet hiding under tired carpet, and lifting it to sand the floor underneath is often cheaper than laying something new, and leaves a deeper impression on buyers long after they’ve forgotten the colours of the new paintwork.
North West London flooring experts One Flooring offer sanding and refinishing services as well as supply and fitting solid wood flooring, covering all bases whether your vendor’s floor needs a new lease of life or a full replacement.
A teal feature wall in the lounge or deep plum in the bedroom can make for striking interior design choices, but they’re ones that buyers often struggle to see past.
One warm off-white running through the hall and living areas makes rooms read as a sequence and lets viewers picture their own furniture.
Paint is cheap. The real work is filling the picture hooks and scuffed skirting first, which is exactly what a sharp-eyed buyer notices.
A full kitchen replacement is a big spend to recover in a sale. The cabinet carcasses are often perfectly sound, so new doors and handles can change the look for a fraction of the cost.
Just be sure to measure the hole centres on the old handles before ordering. A specialist like The Handle Studio lists every handle by that measurement, so the new ones screw straight into the existing holes with no filling.
A worn laminate worktop is worth replacing too – as the main kitchen surface, it’s sure to attract a buyer’s attention in your listing photos.
Nobody expects a new suite. They do notice black mould in the silicone, and it makes them wonder what else has been ignored.
Resealing the bath and regrouting a tiled wall is a weekend’s job, and if there’s mildew on the ceiling, a working extractor fan does more than a coat of paint.
The exterior shot usually leads the listing, and the photos do most of the early selling. Rightmove found only 3% of people would be comfortable buying a home without viewing it or seeing photos. Yet the front is often the most neglected part of the house.
Repaint a faded front door. Cut back the hedge, weed the path and put a pair of planters by the step. None of this costs much, and it decides whether someone scrolling past stops to look.
Buyers walk round a house quietly adding up what they’d need to fix. The shorter that list, the less they’re tempted to knock off their offer, and these renovations can restore a little life in a property where it’s needed the most.
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