Prepare Your House For Sale

Big Demand For Curb Appeal

So, You want curb appeal. Right? Every house needs to have curb appeal, but for what reason, pride of ownership or trying to sell your home. I have consulted people on this topic for a few years now. There is a large difference between the two. Lets be honest here, you could hire a consultant and a high end landscaper who has actual names to the styles of curb appeal that he does, I can tell you right now most people could care less what you call it except, beautiful. Now, the real deal we all know is money. Consultants and high end landscapers take lots of it, if you have lots of money just burning a hole in your pocket then take look in the phone book theres a ton of over priced landscapers who will call your curb appeal by a style name and charge you a fortune.

I will take the approach that I give 80% of my clients and that is one of beauty and budget. Lets forget about the fancy named styles and landscapers trying to sell this to you. First you need to walk out to the front of your house right now. Thats right, leave me here and walk out front. Go ahead, do it. Ok, what did you see? Write it down and look at it. Now you have your layout in your mind, next step is for what reason do you want the curb appeal? Need to help to sell your house or are you just like I said earlier, pride of ownership. I will lean more towards the side of selling your house. As this is the area that I normally consult in. This is also the area where the money part comes in. People planning on staying in their house will want to spend far more then the person trying to sell.

The start is this, what is your reason? Whats the budget? Now, here is where I usually take over for my clients. I consult them on what to do next, for me and many others this is a fine line. I consult and I provide the required services, so you can see a high trust factor going on here. I take an approach of, the best bang for the buck. You can never go wrong this way. I have clients that have a considerable amount of money and I end up talking them out of spending lots more. I firmly believe in making a honest living and not taking advantage of people and a persons home is a emotional aspect for them. Lots of contractors and landscapers take the opposite approach and try to sell you on the most expensive style and this takes the most labor, think you can figure out the rest. I have recently started to provide free consulting through my own website in a effort to help people out, as I am tired of watching big landscaping companies with big fancy trucks and crews who you know are getting paid next to nothing to do the work on your home.

So, enough about that, did you think about that budget yet? You can also take the approach of laying out everything you want to do and then costing it out and then pick and chose what you want. Lets, start at the curb. If your mail box is on your side of the street spruce it up. Don’t have a rusted up pile of junk on a stick, buy a new one, even if you only replace the mail box top. Now days most people have the all in one plastic style. Now, the ground around it can be removed and mulch can be put down and flowers, remember flowers need water, dead flowers take away from curb appeal. Theres one thing already done. Make sure the lawn is in some what good shape, not weeds and dead patches every where. Buy some spray on fertilizer and grass mulch blend in a bag and get the yard in shape. Trim the edges of side walks and drives. This gives a nice clean look and costs not a dime, that is if you do it yourself.

Take a look around the yard, don’t have to many things out or two many lawn decorations, and just so you know if you still have the pink birds in the front lawn, put them away. If you have shrubs or bushes around the house trim them back, don’t allow them to be over grown or hang over drives or walks. Take or remove any dead plant life. Over all you want a clean open feel to the front of the house. If you have lots of trees, cut back really low branches. If you have large trees that have large dead sections, call in a person and get these removed. This may cost alittle more, but will be well worth. Look around theres alot of tree trimmers out there. Now you could already decide to stop there and have done enough to get people to slow down and look at your house. Like I said earlier, been doing this for a few years and if you don’t have curb appeal, most people will never make it inside. I could write a book on this one topic, so I will stop here for now as this article is getting longer by the minute.

I hope this article is helpful to all. I try to write in a very straight forward and simple style. You don’t need all the fluff and no stuff, when your trying to improve upon one of the biggest investments of your life. Lastly your home is just that your home, beauty still can be in the eye of the beholder, won’t always help you to sell, but it makes you happy. Right?