Tips to sell your house fast

The property market is tougher than usual so make sure your house stands out from the rest with these tips from experts

IT USED to be so simple. You wanted to sell your home so you put it on the market and soon had a steady stream of willing buyers beating a path to your door. But not any more – these days many properties stay on the market for months. Sometimes the only way for desperate owners to get a much-needed sale is to slash their asking price radically. Yes, times have definitely changed. The average price of a middle-segment home was about 12 per cent lower in real terms in September last year compared with the peak in August 2007, says Jacques du Toit, a property analyst at Absa.

“We’re seeing an overall property market that increasingly feels the pinch of the poor economy,” says Samuel Seeff, chairman of the Seeff Property Group. Areas where house sales are particularly slow include country towns and mining villages in the north of the country.

But if you urgently have to sell there are steps you can take to make your home more attractive to buyers – and they needn’t cost an arm and a leg. Here’s what you need to do.

START WITH THE BASICS

The golden rule is first fix what’s broken then start working on making the house look good, says Wicus Pretorius, editor of décor magazine Home. “There’s no point in investing in new blinds if there are cracks in the walls. If buyers notice one problem they become suspicious about the whole house.”

He says homeowners often neglect the floor and ceiling. “Think of them as extra walls and make sure they’re clean and free of cracks or holes.”

Your kitchen and bathroom can make or break the value of your house, Cape Town-based quantity surveyor Jandré Botha says. “If you can afford to, replace floor and wall tiles in your kitchen and bathroom. You can also repaint or varnish cupboards.”

If your budge t won’t allow for new tiles you should at least ensure your bathroom is free of mould and damp.

Remove old grout between tiles and replace it. “It’s an unpleasant task but you’ll be glad you did it,” Pretorius says. The same applies to old silicone.

Kitchens quite often have a space provided above the stove for an extractor fan but many people don’t install one. “If you don’t install one your kitchen looks incomplete,” Botha says. You can buy one for less than R1 000.

Paint is a wonderful