Curb Appeal for Selling Your Austin Texas Home
You only have a few seconds to make a first impression on buyers who see your home. Make those seconds count.
Two Places Homes Buyers Will See Your Austin TX Home
Home buyers in Austin Texas will see your home in two ways:
- Online: Most home buyers start their search on-line. Make sure your photos show your home in the best possible light. If your home doesn't look good on-line, most buyers won't even bother to see it in person.
- When They Visit: If you've already made a good on-line impression, you get another chance to WOW them when they come see your home with their Buyers Agent.
Curb Appeal: 7 Tips for Lasting First Impressions
Close your eyes. Imagine you are pulling up to your home for the first time. What do you see? These are the hot spots you need to hit to make first impressions count.
- Landscaping: Make sure your front yard is neat, clean and the edges of the grass are trimmed. Prune bushes to let light in the windows and clear out any old, dead stuff. You can do more extensive landscaping later but make sure to take care of these basics, first.
- The Front Porch: Make sure your front porch or outside your front door is well-lit, and swept clean. Replace burned-out or dim bulbs, and replace fixtures that are old, or the glass or the finish looks less-than-fresh.
- Porch Railings: Many older homes have metal porch railings that are rusty or the paint is peeling. These can usually be cleaned up with a wire brush and painted with paint made for priming and painting over rusted surfaces. All of the tools and paint should cost less than $40.
- The Front Door: Does your front door disappear? Step back and take a good look. You can sand it and paint it in a short afternoon, and that alone will make a huge difference in how people see your home. If the lock set is outdated, you can replace it yourself for under $200 and in about an hour, usually with very basic tools.
- House Numbers: Unless your house numbers are really new, replace them with fresh ones that are easily seen from the street.
- The Garage Door: Clean the outside of the garage door. This is a prime place for making a house look old and dirty. If necessary, paint it but make sure to caulk all of the cracks with exterior caulk, first, to keep the new paint from cracking.
- The Driveway: Power wash it (unless we're still in the terrible drought), and get rid of all of the weeds. Make sure the grass is edged neatly along the driveway and any ratty plantings are trimmed or pulled out.
Curb Appeal is Home Staging for the Outside
Done right, the curb appeal for the outside of your home will work magic just like home staging does for the interior of a home: it makes buyers feel comfortable and more likely to stay a while and really take a good look around.
