Thread: best and cheapest way to make house more appealing for sale

Be careful about the cheap temptation when reno'ing. If I were to walk into a house and suspected renovations had taken place I'd demand to see receipts that prove someone compatent had done the work. If that's not provable I would deduct the increase asked for the reno's and make that my offer. There are far too many DYIs here that do things on the cheap and I mean really cheap that you can't trust any work done by them no matter what. The work they do is the absolute shytes.

Originally Posted by Barry_White

Rather than paint the drive I think it would look better if the drive and the front patio were stencilcreted.

Unless he can do it himself I think the expense is over the top for what will still be the same red brick house. Stencilcrete aint cheap to get done.

I like the look of dirty doogies ideas especially the fibre cement wall at the front the only thing i wouldnt do is the privacy screen on the verandah it would close it in too much but te rest is pretty good

Originally Posted by need_2_sell

huge land 727m2

Thats funny... mate you need to get out of the city!

this picture is great! and im a girl and pregnant so i wont be doing the work myself. i like the idea of the fence and have been looking aroung at the fibrecement and found some pretty cheap so i'll give that a go. i like the screen to i have been looking at louvers to break up the red but wasnt sure if it would look good. thanks for the ideas!!!

Originally Posted by Harry72

Thats funny... mate you need to get out of the city!

Sheeze Harry 727m in Sydney will buy the main street in Pirie.

Studley

Originally Posted by abitfishy

Unless he can do it himself I think the expense is over the top for what will still be the same red brick house. Stencilcrete aint cheap to get done.

What do you call expensive. My mate up here does it for $35.00 m2. And these are just suggestions for the lady. She has to decide how desperate she wants to sell the place and as was suggested to paint it would smack of cheapness and only temporary anyway.

Hey Barry,

Mate, $35 sq m seems cheap as chips. I can't remember exactly how much, but we considered it when we moved into this place and it was mega expensive. I guess maybe Sydney is different.....

Originally Posted by Studley 2436

Sheeze Harry 727m in Sydney will buy the main street in Pirie.

Studley

Not likely!
A lot of city folk have been buying up here... and driven the prices right up, we have(in this area) some of the highest house price inflation in the country!
All because of the speculation of the mining boom and speculation is all its been so far
Even the dump I live in(about 750m2)will go around the 250k mark!

Well I was thinking of a $1000 budget for materials (not including large shrubs - which could be sold later) for the street side.

I wasn't actually thinking of using paving paint for the drive or porch - too expensive - I was thinking of something like Turkish Whitewash (except colored) 1 part bondcrete, 1 part white portland cement, 1 part calcite or pumice (from pottery supply or maybe art supply), 1 part silver sand + a little render pigment to taste - mix into a lumpy mess then dilute with water to whipped creamy consistancy and broom onto very clean concrete. Cover for 3 days. Viola ! Looks hot! Tough as (insert suitable word here) Estimate $150 - OR cheaper still - just bleach the concrete so it looks white and clean.

The rendered fence is no drama either - made from pine sleeper frame attached to existing fence posts and rendered with the old bitkote technique. Estimate $600. I would leave the existing driveway gates but spray them up.

The planter boxes are also made from cut down sleepers and 4.5 mm fibre cement with matching Bitkote render. estimate about $50

Porch screen - $200

plus a few annuals or plants.

It would take 2 guys 3 maybe 4 days work if they knew what they were doing.

Many people want a house to do some work on themselves so any "improvements" you spend money on may only be seen as problems to deal with for others.

The stock market is in free fall right now, this may see house prices go up a little as investors rethink their their positions.

About 12 years ago I had 3 houses for sale in a slow market. We held out for the best price for months with no rental income. Finally we bit the bullet and dropped price by 10% and they all sold in 3 days.

In hind sight, I should have accepted the seemingly low offers we got months earlier as they were very close to the sale price achieved and we would not have had to make 4 or 5 mortgage payments while the houses sat vacant.

Realistically, if a buyer sees enough value they will buy, if not no sale.

One other option is to offer the selling agents a higher commission in return for a closed sale within a certain time frame. Say an extra 1% if sold within 3 weeks and within a pre determined price bracket. This may inspire them to show the property to many more people because selling your house means more in their pocket than selling someone elses. That may be the key to success.

Having purchased my house only in the last 12months I would have to say presentation is a very big part of it but not everything. I looked at some very very crappy houses and some very very well done renovated ones. I think it all comes down to personal taste and the sort of potential buyers you have looking at the house. Some people would rather pay a premium price and have all the work done whereas some would rather pay the base price and do the work themselves. The house I ended up purchasing sat somewhere in the middle of the options I had for example the pool, pool fence and deck had been done up but the gardens need a bomb dropped on them the weeds and lawn were so bad. But in all truth the owners spend $12,000 on the pool/deck reno and in all truth if given teh option I would have rathered payed the $12,000 less and done it myself as I would have incorporated a few changes that they did not do and would cost me too much to do now that it is finished. On the other hand the gardens did detract from this place a lot and it sat on the market for months. I ended up paying $50,000 less than the original asking price. I am not saying they should have spent thousands to do the yard but weeding the gardens and mowing the lawn goes a long way towards presentation and lets people see that maybe a few weekends work and they would come up very nice. For that $50,000 less I payed I have spent a number of weekends cleaning and weeding the gardens, $300 to have some trees removed as they were hanging over the fence and were ugly, $250 on turf and after this week another $200 to have the rest of the weedy trees removed. I am about to order some landscaping materials which is another $500 for link blocks, top soil and pebbles and when all is finished it will look amazing. So for the extra $1200-$1300 they could have lifted the price by thousands just because of presentation. So what I am saying is choose carefully what you spend money as some large cost items do not actually add to the overall price you will get ie render a waste of money if the new buyer does not actually want render they will not pay a premium price for it but some small things like the fence and front yard are worth doing up.