Seven tips guaranteed to increase the sale price of your apartment

In this article you will find the seven most important and integral tips on how to increase the value of your property when selling it, so you can ask for as much money as possible and the buyer will be happy to meet your price. Ideally, buyers will actually compete to be the one that gets to buy the apartment from you! I have sorted these tips in descending order from the cheapest to those for which you will have to stump up more  money. However, all of them will definitely pay off and I highly recommend the investments listed here. However, not everyone is in a situation where they can afford to make investments in the order of tens of thousands of crowns. However, there are real estate specialists who can cover the cost of this expenditure for you as part of the commission they receive from the sale of your property! In my case, it is a matter of course to design a sales strategy in which you will see some, maybe all, of the below tips. But each one isn't necessarily suitable for every property. That's why I always approach the sale of each bit of real estate individually!

2) Depersonalisation

 

This is another very important aspect of sale preparation that will not cost you a penny but has a huge impact. In the mind of a buyer who purchases an apartment such little things as family photos, pets (even the smallest ones) and so on subconsciously affect them. You live in the apartment and so you don't even notice these little things anymore. And above all, they're part of your life - that’s why you have them there! However, a person who wants to buy your apartment doesn’t want to buy that part of your life. They want an apartment that is a blank canvas they can furnish and decorate in their own image! That’s why from the first moment they set foot inside it, they need to imagine the apartment is actually theirs and that they are not just a stranger visiting!  All personal items should disappear and the interior should remain as functional and austere as possible. Sure, you might adore the beautiful orange color of the curtains coupled with red flowers. However, most people interested in your apartment will not share this enthusiasm and you are unnecessarily depriving yourself of potential buyers without knowing it. Even if you find out after the viewings why potential buyers didn't go for your apartment, no one will tell you directly that it was because the decor in the bathroom was absolutely terrible and they felt they just couldn't get along with it (in truth, people usually can’t even come up with such a precise reason themselves. As I said at the outset, it's about indecipherable emotions!).

3) Make sure everything works!

Are you used to not having a light in the pantry because the one from the corridor illuminates it perfectly well, and so you haven't replaced the cracked light bulb for five years because, well, no one minds? Do you know the exact position you have to leave the water tap at so the faucet doesn't drip? Are you well-trained in tapping, pulling, lifting, begging and voila! - then it works - to open the door? Then you should believe that these little things you no longer even notice can still discourage your potential buyer. Yes, it sounds crazy, but even the fact that on a viewing the interested party presses a switch and nothing happens can be a decisive factor in whether they think your apartment is the right one or not! So don't take any risks! Make sure  everything works and that means works for someone who doesn't know all the little tricks and tweaks like you. It costs a few crowns and a little time to replace a light bulb, tighten a screw, etc. But it can earn you literally tens of thousands!

5) Home staging

Home staging takes several forms and actually includes the aforementioned methods, plus a strategic placement of furniture and other accessories to create the so-called "hotel effect". Have you ever noticed what hotel rooms look like? Purposeful, austere, decorative, of course....but completely impersonal. So everyone can create their "own style" there very quickly. And this is what you generally need to achieve when selling your property - not regard it as your own, but as somebody else's new apartment! Home staging is all about this. There are various companies on the market that will arrange it on a turnkey basis according to what is suitable for your property. Of course, these outfits thrive best when they have a completely empty apartment to work with. Not everyone can afford this at the time of sale, so using your existing furniture is normally one of the basic components of the process. It should be noted that this service is one of the most expensive things on the list of pre-viewing improvements, in the order of tens of thousands of crowns. But again, I believe that it will definitely pay off and you'll get it all back in the total sale price for the property!

6) Photos

Photos are the absolute essence of things when it comes to advertising your apartment on the internet or in the print media. So much depends on them! Compare which of the below apartments  you would rather visit?! And that's not to mention the competition from other apartments. Buyers searching on the internet really don't go through all the details or call every single ad. They pre-select properties on the basis of adverts and the photos in them are the reason yours is clicked on or not. And secondly, photos inform whether or not a viewing is arranged. I always recommend a professional photographer. I wouldn't even bother offering any real estate for sale without one when I see the competition from other ads! A professional photographer costs time and money because they prepare the shot, take pictures, and touch up the photographs. However, again you will easily get your money back  in the form of the higher price you can ask for a well-presented property.  And, moreover, once you've gone through all the steps above and nicely prepared the apartment for sale, wouldn't it be a shame to spoil it with low-quality photos that ruin the whole effort?

7) Showing people round on a viewing

If you fulfill all the above steps, it will cost you a lot of time, and even a fair bit of money. It's you, though, who knows the most about the property, which is great - you can answer any question from potential buyers. But a lot of people don't ask anything at all - they want, or rather need, all necessary information to be presented to them in a logical sequence. So you should learn how to accompany people on viewings. Have your route set so that you don't forget to show or mention anything. Then the whole process of what you can do to maximize the price of your property will be complete.

Of course, in addition to all this, you will have to come up with a sales strategy, i.e. where to advertise and for how long, how to arrange viewings, etc. Or you can hire a professional who masters all of the above. They will have several years of experience with it all and hundreds of sales in a row. Then you will save an incredible amount of time you would have spent learning how to do everything right. Lots of money lost for mistakes you make along the way is inevitable during the process. There  is so much that needs to be done, so getting a real professional on your side is the eighth (and bonus!) piece of advice about what you can do to sell your property as expertly as possible, as quickly as possible, at the best price and with a minimum of stress! I describe how to find and identify just such a professional in other sections, so please don't hesitate to read those too.