The price of preparing a property to attract more buyers

Home Renovation

Real Estate

Team MONEYME|19 July 2022| 3-minute read

You get as good as you give. It’s a saying you’ll often find on the tip of your tongue when it comes to selling a property. 

To secure a premium sales price, vendors need to invest time, effort, and yes sometimes money to prepare a property. 

How much time, how much effort, and yes how much money, will depend on the market, a vendor’s budget, and the property itself.

What are the main costs of preparing a property?

For every individual property, there will be unique costs attached.

 “It really does depend on the age of the home, and whether or not it’s vacant,” said Kostya Logvinov, partner and director at Canberra’s Carter and Co Agents.

“For a vacant home, one of the main costs would be hiring furniture, whereas if it’s an older home you might be looking at repainting the inside and the outside of the house,” he said.

Repainting is typically one of the more expensive tasks to take on before selling a property.

“An affordable task, which everyone needs to do is decluttering and that doesn’t cost you anything, other than sometimes people have to hire storage,” said Logvinov. “It doesn’t have to be new kitchens and new bathrooms but it has to be as well presented as physically possible.”

Lacey West’s Juliana Gomes has been preparing properties for the booming Gold Coast market for years. 

“You can include staging, you can include cleaning and if the property is good to go you may only be looking at marketing costs and photos and advertising,” she said. “Just to put the property online, it can go from $3000 up to $10,000.” 

Every home will require different costs but the objective is universal – achieve a premium sale price.

Why should vendors invest in their property before they sell?

It might seem counterintuitive to spend money on a place that you’re about to sell but to achieve a high sale price it’s critical. 

“You really want to stand above the rest, you really want to showcase that you have looked after the property and you’re caring for it so that the next buyer think’s that, and that’s why they’ll be paying extra for this property,” said Gomes.

In November Gomes sold not one but three properties in Burleigh Heads that she puts down to good investing.

“It was a new home but the vendors spent money on marketing and staging for the property,” she said. 

“We did the auction and the property sold at auction for $1.65 million but because we did such a good job, we managed to sell the townhouse next door, and the one right at the front. 

Preparing a property is all about attracting more buyers. “It’ll increase the home’s priority in the eyes of the buyers,” said Logvinov. 

“When buyers are making a shortlist of which homes they want to buy, generally buyers will gravitate towards the ones that are very well presented,” he said. “When you have multiple buyers who’re going for the same property, that’s when you might get a higher price.”

Preparing a property inside and out, from top to bottom can go a long way when it comes time to sell.

Manage the upfront costs and prepare your next listing with the help of ListReady.