Selling your home can be a stressful and challenging undertaking. Ultimately, it’s about making your house as desirable as possible to potential buyers to get the most money out of your property. With an array of factors at play, it’s crucial to create a positive and lasting first impression.
Without a good first impression, potential buyers will switch off before they view the rest of the property. Therefore, it’s important to utilise one key aspect to help in selling your home: curb appeal.
What is curb appeal?
Curb appeal is how attractive a house looks from the outside. Curb appeal encompasses all the exterior and external factors that will form a potential buyer’s first impression.
Curb appeal includes:
- The condition of the front door
- Design features on the exterior, such as lights and other decorative ornaments
- Quality of the windows and roof tiles
- Cleanliness of the gutters and front garden
- Maintenance of horticultural features, such as hedges, trees and grass
The front door is a key focal point that draws the buyer’s attention when it comes to curb appeal. Failure to keep up with regular outdoor maintenance, for example, can reduce the value of your house by 10%, according to HouseLogic.
In the current housing market, it’s important to have promising curb appeal in order to get the most out of your property when you’re looking to sell.
Thankfully, there are several tips that can improve your home’s curb appeal, from a modern front door canopy to a well-maintained front lawn, each providing its own unique benefit.
Curb appeal tips
According to HomeLight’s survey, a well-landscaped home is likely to fetch 5.5 – 12.7% more than one with no landscaping. In a contemporary lens, landscaping incorporates more than just the front garden or lawn, but it includes the overall aesthetic.
Before you look to sell your property, make sure you’ve addressed the main tips that will help improve your home’s curb appeal:
- Cleaning the exterior
- Adding features, like a canopy over the front door
- Maintaining the front garden and lawn
- Updating or replacing design features
Cleaning the exterior
An important – if not obvious – solution to improving your home’s curb appeal is to clean the exterior. Remove any rubbish, weeds, and any other unwanted elements. Make sure to clean your property’s windows as well as your front door.
In the UK, front doors receive constant exposure to adverse weather and will cause your door to wear down and fade over time. This is a good opportunity to also provide a fresh coat of paint to any windowpanes and doors that might need it too.
HouseLogic also reports that performing a thorough cleaning of the outside of a home can add anywhere up to £11,000 to the sale price of certain properties.
Canopy over the front door
Door canopies are an excellent cost-effective investment for a property and can increase your property’s curb appeal exponentially, especially if placed above the front door. At front door Canopies, we provide bespoke door canopies that not only improve your property’s curb appeal but will also increase the value of your home.
Our canopies act as the perfect protection for your property, designed to withstand the adverse British weather. A canopy effectively acts as a shield for your front door, prolonging its lifespan and aesthetic appeal.
Whether traditional or modern, front door canopies provide shelter to the area above the door, keeping you dry on rainy days. They’re designed for the rain to run off the edge instead.
But if you’re looking for a more modern front door canopy, these will provide additional protection from UV rays and also add a contemporary aesthetic that embraces the minimalist movement.
Exterior home maintenance
While cleaning your exterior is half the battle, making sure it maintains its clean and neat aesthetic is the other.
If you have a front garden, make sure that any weeds, unwanted plants, and vermin are removed and if there are hedgerows, it’s important to trim them neatly and appropriately. If your front garden has grass, make sure it’s also cut too, and not overgrown and wild.
Updating or replacing exterior design features
When it comes to increasing your property’s curb appeal, it’s vital to include every aspect of your property. This includes the roofing and any fences.
If you have an old and broken fence running alongside your property, update it or add a coat of paint to enhance its curb appeal.
Roof tiles and gutters, while they can be costly to replace, might just require a deep clean. There is an array of professional services that offer gutter and roof cleaning that can add further value to your property as a more cost-effective solution.
Replacing any old outdoor lighting features or decrepit patio paving slabs can be the difference between you selling your property or deterring a potential buyer.
Conclusion
Improving your property’s curb appeal can take more than a few ideas, from front door canopies to maintaining the lawn or cleaning the roof tiles, it will be an ongoing solution if you’re looking to sell your home. But by increasing your home’s curb appeal, you can increase the overall value of your property when it is time to sell.