Cheap ways to boost curb appeal before selling, and how to preview them?
Listing our house at the end of summer and our agent flat out said the front is costing us money. Faded front door, tired landscaping, mismatched shutters. Budget is maybe 1500 dollars and my own labor, so no new siding, no new windows.
Two questions really. What cheap fixes have actually moved the needle when you sold, and is there a way to preview the changes first? I do not want to spend a weekend painting the door black only to find out it makes the whole front look like a funeral home.
Answers
Under 1500 with your own labor you can do a lot. Door paint plus new hardware, modern house numbers, matching light fixtures, fresh mulch and a couple of flats of annuals, pressure wash everything including the driveway. That list is most of a weekend and buyers notice every bit of it in the listing photos.
For previewing, do not guess on the door color. I put a photo of my mother in law's house through a curb appeal app on Google Play before we sold it last year, you see the door, trim and siding colors changed on the real photo of the house. The black door we were all set on did in fact look like a funeral home on her light gray ranch, we went dark green instead and the listing photos came out great.
Listen to your agent on this one, ours had us do three things and I think they paid for themselves several times over. Pressure wash, fresh mulch with crisp bed edges, and replace the dead junipers with whatever looks full at the nursery that week. Buyers decide in the first ten seconds from the car.
One thing people skip: walk across the street and photograph your house with your phone, then look at the photo instead of the house. Flaws you have stopped seeing in person jump right out in a photo, that is exactly how buyers will first see it online anyway.
