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Five Ways to Help You to Sell Your House

Five Way to Help You to Sell Your House
Photo by Matt Jones on Unsplash

Despite the UK being in a bit of flux, financially speaking, due to the coronavirus pandemic, house prices are currently at an all time high, making it a sellers market right now. However, that doesn’t mean that your property will immediately fly off of the shelf, and leaving a property sitting on the market for too long can be costly in the long run, especially if you’re still paying the mortgage and it’s too late to stop foreclosure. With this in mind, today we’re looking at five things that you can do which will increase your chances of selling your property quickly:

Deep Cleaning

When you live in a house, it’s really easy to become a bit blind to some of the every day bits of grubbiness, like dirty skirting boards or door handles. Hiring a professional cleaning company, such as Clean 360, means that you’ll get a team of professionals tackling a deep clean and they’ll be better placed to spot those tricky areas that you miss when it’s your own home. You may also find that when the house is properly spotless, there are areas which don’t need as much maintenance or redecoration as you’d once thought.

Declutter

If you walk into a house which is up to the shoulders in clutter, not only will it be harder to see the true size of the rooms, it also makes it harder to envisage your own stuff inside the house as well. If you’re trying to sell your house, make it easy for them to see all the fantastic living space you’re offering them but don’t make it look like a generic hotel; leave some personality. Apart from anything else it gives unimaginative buyers suggestions as to what they might do

Think About Kerb Appeal

First impressions really do count and buyers are judging your home well before they step over the threshold. Your house may be stunning inside, but if the outside doesn’t look great you jeopardise your sale. Look at your property from the road? How does it compare to other houses in your street? As you walk from the pavement to your front door, does every element of your property look cared for and well maintained? If not, taking care of those things will make a huge difference.

Use Your Nose!

There are lots of people who advocate baking or brewing coffee before showing potential buyers around your home to make it smell more homely when you sell your house, and I’m sure Mrs. Hinch and her army of followers would have a few tricks using pints of Zoflora, too. Obviously, you want the place to smell good, BUT…not TOO good! If you use strong air fresheners or smells in every single area of your home, people may wonder if you’re masking something, like the smell of damp.

Check Out the Competition

There’s basically zero chance that yours is the only property that potential buyers will be viewing, and it’s good to know what you’re up against. While going on viewings of every similar property in your area would be time consuming, it’s well worth doing some browsing on the usual property websites to see what else is out there at a similar price point to yours. This will  allow you to see if there’s anything else you could add to your home to make it a more competitve option.

Home · How To

Tips for Selling a Family Home

Whatever your location, if you’re looking to sell your house fast in Chapel Hill, NC, Tokyo, or London, you might not want to spend a huge amount of money on the property before you sell it, but there are lots of little tweaks that you can make which won’t cost the earth but will increase your chances of finding a buyer. Today, I’m looking at five simple things that you can do which will make buyers see the potential of your home:

Gardens

Many people want outdoor space but will struggle to see the potential of a garden or green space which is wild and overgrown. If you want to sell your house quickly using a site like https://webuyhousesinatlanta.com/, it’s important to spend a weekend mowing lawns, weeding borders and generally tidying up as much as you can. A neat front garden will increase the curb appeal of your home exponentially.

Front Door

Your front door is the gateway to your home and if it looks shabby, it can make the whole house look shabby too. If it’s a wooden door then sand it down and give it a new lick of paint in a frsh, vibrant colour (West London estate agents Featherstone Leigh suggest that red is one of the colours which appeals to buyers the most!) and if you have a UPVC door, make sure it’s spotlessly clean and free from cobwebs!

Lighting

If your house suffers with poor lighting then it can immediately give a bad impression of the whole space. Most house buyers want light and airiness, so if you’re using bulbs which give off barely more than a candle’s worth of light, you might want to consider opting for a bulb with a brighter but warmer hue. Lamps are also nice, especially if you’re showing a house at night because they’ll give a cosy, homely feel and help you to sell house fast.

Clutter

If you’re a bit of a hoarder, you might like to live with a lot of STUFF around you, but most house buyers report being put-off of an otherwise perfect home because of the seller’s clutter. It can be really hard to see past random clutter and too many furnishings to imagine how a space would look with our own stuff in it, so pare back your clutter as much as you can – getting rid of stuff will make packing to move a lot easier, too!

Clean

Cleanliness is really important to most buyers. A house doesn’t have to look like a show home, but for most people the thought of moving into a house and having to clean of a layer of grime from the previous tenants is more than a little off-putting. If you’re going to spend money on anything, invest in paying a provate cleaning company to come and do a one-off deep clean of your property before you put it on the market. It will look better, smell better and undoubtedly be more appealing to the people you want to buy it.

Family · How To · Money

The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Selling Groups

Facebook selling groupsIn times of austerity, it’s no great surprise that online selling of new and second hand goods becomes more popular than ever. Everyone is looking to make a little more money and the great British public does love a bargain! These days, selling on eBay seems to be less profitable than ever – once listing fees, selling fees, PayPal fees and postage are taken out of whatever you make on an item, it’s almost impossible to make a profit on anything, so more and more sellers are turning to the next best thing – Facebook selling groups.

Enterprising folk are making selling groups, of which there are literally thousands on Facebook, so that people can advertise their goods and save themselves the fees and postage that eBay likes to extract. It can be a tricky world to navigate, so I thought I’d give you a quick beginner’s guide to how to effectively use Facebook selling groups.

1. Join as many groups as you can

To increase the likelihood of selling things, it’s good to join as many groups as you can. They’re usually listed geographically, and the easiest way to find them is to go to the search box at the top of Facebook and type in your town name, followed by ‘selling’. However, if you find your timeline overrun by selling posts, to the extent that you can barely pick out statuses from friends and family, it is possible to ‘unfollow’ the group but remain a member. Simply click on the arrow in the top right hand of any post from the group and click ‘Unfollow’. You’ll be able to visit the group at your leisure without feeling bombarded, but be warned, you may miss out on a bargain if it doesn’t pop up on your timeline!

2. Read the rules

There will often be a pinned post or a link in the sidebar, listing the rules for posting in each particular group. Some groups have no rules and often state that in the group name, but others are closely administered and like you to post in a certain way. Posting outside of these rules is often the quickest way to have your post removed, so save yourself the effort of writing out your post only to have it deleted by brushing up on the rules before you post.

3. Special Interest

It’s often also worth searching for special interest groups, relating to what you want to sell. So far, I’ve come across specific groups for selling baby items, maternity clothes, plus sized clothes, baby slings and wraps, pushchairs and many others besides. Often, these will have a more far-flung member base, so postage might be necessary, or payment via PayPal, but they can also be a great way to sell a slightly more niche item.

4. Etiquette

It’s usually the case, in these groups, that the first person to comment on a selling post gets first refusal. Even if a person asks a question, they should be at the top of the list when it comes to who gets to buy your item and passing people over without giving them a chance to commit to an item is frowned upon. Once someone has committed to buy something, you may notice people commenting after to ask if they can be ‘in line’. this basically means that they want to be in with a chance to buy from you if the first person pulls out. As long as you stay within the timeline of people who’ve expressed an interest, you should be fine.

5. Acronyms

When I first joined these groups, I spent ages wondering why people were signing off their posts with the name “Tia”, when their name was clearly something else. Obviously, I’d missed the fact that TIA means ‘thanks in advance’. You may also see OOS, which means ‘on other sites’ as an indicator that, even if you’re first to comment on the thread you’re watching, someone may have still got in before you on a different page. There are a few of these acronyms knocking about and the best advice I can give is to ask if you don’t know what they mean!

6. Bartering and Payment

Bartering is usually absolutely fine on these pages and many people will actually ask for ‘offers’, rather than explicitly asking a price for an item. Payment is usually cash on collection unless otherwise stated.

7. Safety

This is obviously common sense, but it’s worth bearing in mind that you’re either giving your address to a complete stranger or going somewhere unknown to collect something, so ALWAYS go with another person and never agree to meet someone unless it’s a very public place and you have someone with you. I never buy or sell without my Husband being in the house or car with me and I implore you to follow the same rule.

8. Make sure your goods are salable

Ensure that everything you sell is clean and in good working order, unless otherwise stated. I’m currently selling an oven for spares or repair and it’s CLEARLY stated that it’s in need of a good clean and doesn’t work properly. A lot of the people buying from these sites are doing so because they don’t have a lot of money and are simply looking for things to make their lives better as cheaply as possible, so the least you can do is make sure that things are in the best condition they can be.

9. Don’t be afraid to ask

Unless stated otherwise in the rules of the group, many of them also allow ‘WANTED’ posts. It’s perfectly acceptable to make a post asking for a particular item and stating a budget. You just might find the very thing you’re for, and also prompt someone to make some money off of an item that’s just been laying around, taking up space.

10. Delivery not included?

In the vast majority of cases, items are collection only, however on some local groups people do consider delivering an item, perhaps for a couple of quid in petrol money. If you’re buying a large item, however, you will often find a “man with a van” lurking around in the group, who can collect an item and deliver it to you for a fraction of what it would cost to hire a van. Admins of the group often know of a person who does this and it’s always worth an ask.

Are you a fan of Facebook selling groups? Have you grabbed a major bargain or sold something that you never thought you’d shift? I’d love to hear your stories, along with any other tips or tricks that you’ve picked up along the way.

How To

Upcycling Roses Part 2 – Homemade Bath Bombs

Last week I showed you how to make a pretty and more-or-less free centrepiece for a table using recycled rose petals and today I’m going to show you how to make homemade bath bombs using some more of your dried petals. You will need:

150g Bicarbonate of Soda (food grade)

50g Citric Acid

5ml of Rose Essential Oil

Edible Glitter

Pink Food Colouring

Dried rose petals (method for drying in previous post, see link above)

Tools:

Sieve

Kitchen scales

Large mixing bowl

Rubber gloves

Teaspoon

bath bomb mould (we used a rose shaped one)
Hand sprayer full of cold water

1. Begin by chopping your rose petals into smaller pieces with a sharp knife – remember, they’ll need to be able to fit down your drain when you enpty the bath!

2. Measure out the dry ingredients (bicarb, citric acid, glitter) and sieve them into the mixing bowl

3. Add the food colouring a couple of drops at a time. The mixture will start to fix and you need to mix quickly to get the colour through evenly. You could also use powdered colour, which would avoid this altogether

4. Add the rose petals, then the essential oil and mix thoroughly. Some oils have a yellow tinge, depending on the carrier oil, which may alter the colour of the mixture. Try to find a clear oil, or adjust the colour after adding with the food colouring, adding a drop at a time

5. Using a gloved hand, grab a handful of the mixture and spray LIGHTLY with the water in the hand sprayer then push the mixture firmly into the moulds (do not allow too much water as the mixture will start to fizz). The back of a teaspoon is handy for smoothing out the flat side of the bomb once it’s in the mould

6. Once you’ve filled all of your moulds (the amounts above made two of our rose shaped bombs but you can multiply the amounts to make more bombs) leave to set for 30 minutes.

7. Ease the bombs out of the moulds

Voila! You have yourself some homemade bath bombs! I used one of them a couple of nights ago to test it out and I must say, they felt wonderfully luxurious. The rose scent was delightful and I felt a bit special having such a lovely bath, full of rose petals and glitter.

Obviously, you’ll need to be careful with these if you have sensitive skin or are pregnant.

This post contains affiliate links.

 

Crafts · How To

Upcycling Rose Petals Part One – Simple Table Centrepiece

I love receiving flowers, same as most people, but I always feel a bit sad when they start to die. Roses are my faves (in fact, Sausage’s middle name is even Rose) and they start off so beautiful and full of potential, but whither away to nothing in such a short time. Recently, Sausage insisted on making me buy buying a bunch of flowers for her Dad and she chose pink roses for him. They lasted quite a while, but when the time came to add them to the compost heap, I decided to keep the petals and dry them for later use.

Drying the petals

The drying itself was a simple process, I simply pull the petals off of the stalks, spread the petals out on a microwaveable plate and buzzed then for a minute at a time until they started to feel a bit crispy. I think it took three one-minute sessions in my 800w microwave and then I spread them on an old tea towel laid flat to soak up any excess moisture. I then stuck them in a lock-tight tupperware box until I needed them.

Simple but pretty table centrepiece

The first thing I decided to use my dried petals for was a pretty table centrepiece, based on an idea I saw at Christmastime on Pinterest but never got around to making. You’ll need:

Dried rose petals

Small bundt cake tin

Boiled water

Tealights

Pretty saucer or bowl

1. Fill the bundt cake tin with the dried rose petals. At this point, you can also add a few drops of rose essential oil if you want to, but mine hadn’t arrived yet, so I didn’t.

2. Pour boiling water on top of the petals

3. Use a spoon or other pokey thing to press the petals down so that they are all submerged below the water and laying flat

4. Place directly into the freezer (it’s a good idea to put a piece of cardboard between the shelf and the tin as it may freeze together and be a total pain to try and extract

5. Once it’s frozen and you’re ready to use the centrepiece, remove it from the freezer and run the outside of the tin under a lukewarm tap to release the ice

6. Place it upside down on your saucer or bowl (it’s a good idea to measure how much water the saucer will take as it may overflow as the centrepiece starts to defrost if you don’t use something big enough). Something vintage and floral would probably look lovely

7. Place your tealight into the dimple in the bottom of the ice and light

8. The ice will probably outlast your tealights, so you may need to replace the candle a couple of times, but as the ice melts, providing you use a plate or bowl that is deep enough, you end up with a candle floating on beautiful rose petals and rose tinted water.

This photo doesn’t really do it justice as it was quite late and taken under the light above my hob, but the water and petals looked a lot prettier in reality!

I think this would make a lovely (and pretty much free) table decoration for a romantic meal for two. You can replace the flower petals with seasonal things like berries or seashells for different occasions too and experiment with scents and colours.

Just a tip – boiling the water first is quite important as it makes the ice clearer when it freezes, allowing you to see what’s inside. As an additional bonus that I wasn’t expecting, the boiling water took some of the pink colour from the petals and make the ice a beautiful pale rose pink colour. The photo below is my first attempt, made without boiling water and it did not work at all!

Part two to follow – come back to see how I get along with making my own rose-scented bath bombs!