Do you have kerb-appeal?

Seven steps to help you achieve a good looking house.

It doesn’t work for books, wine or men, but it does for houses – judging them by their covers I mean.

A property’s outer appearance, its kerb appeal, is often the deal maker (or breaker) when it comes to buying a home. It takes potential buyers no more than thirty seconds to decide whether or not they like a house.
Some houses have natural kerb appeal; some are picture-postcard perfect in our part of the world. But on the whole, kerb appeal is more than just a good-looking house – even the ugliest house can have it. I’ve been helping people sell their homes for 14 years now.

Let me share with you some of the stuff we’ve picked up on the way…

1. Paint your front door.

It sounds simple but this is the first thing that people are going to look at. Go wild with colour, it’s the one place you can. For a contemporary look, matt, muted and washed-out colours are favoured in smart trendy London streets and can look really lovely in our seaside scenery.

2. Lighting

Lighting is vital, placed either side of the front door to add symmetry, or a lantern in a portico entrance. If your property is approached via a garden, light it sensitively. Good garden lighting is unseen. Hide lights in the trees or conceal them in the garden path or drive.

3. Be Neat

The approach to the front door (steps, a path and/or a driveway), should be swept of leaves, and free from rubbish. Cars, bicycles and any vans must be neatly parked.

4. Name or Number?

Numbering or naming a house can easily go wrong. Wonky numerals, badly painted names, or plaques with pictures (such as birds, trees) do no justice to the front of a house. Think slate and chrome, classy, not jazzy!

5. Clean Windows

Windows look sad when they are dirty, so make sure yours are cleaned regularly. Rotten window frames are also unacceptable and if you’re putting in new ones, make sure they are appropriate with the design of the rest of the house.

6. Add Some Greenery

However small the space is, add some greenery. You don’t need a big garden to plant a creeper, and houses look beautiful with plants trailing up them. You can easily make window boxes yourself. Just paint a plastic planter and plant it with some draping ivy from No21 in Aberystwyth. Colourful  planting and box hedges set off the front of a house; or for smaller spaces, such as either side of the front door, planters with box topiary or olive or bay trees. Remember though that some creepers are not good for brickwork as they damage the pointing.

7. The Neighbours

Don’t let the house next door ruin your kerb appeal. If your neighbours have rubbish outside their house, suggest you remove it, rather than bickering about it. And if you’re trimming your hedge, ask if you can do theirs while you’re at it – 10 minutes mowing, or rubbish collecting is worth the effort. Try to conceal their rubbish bins
(and yours) behind a hedge or at the side of the house if possible.

At Alexanders, property is our thing so if you want to talk about what you could do to your house to help it sell, just give us a shout, completely free of charge. It would be our pleasure.