When I buy properties to rent, I look for the opposite of the advice I will give you just now. I can typically buy a house, which looks as if it’s a mess and needs a lot of work, decorate it for a few thousand pounds and make a £10,000 – £15,000 profit on it, within the space of a few weeks.

The tips I will give here can be done by you and does not require a professional home stager. However if you do not have the time home stagers are great value for money, so you might want to consider hiring a professional.

What is home staging?

Simply put home staging is decorating your house to make it more attractive to a prospective buyer. It can add 10 – 15% to our house value and can certainly help sell your house a lot quicker and turn those viewers into buyers.

Your taste may not suit everyone else taste

You might think your home is beautifully decorated but other people may not think the same, or have the same taste as you. You can change this by simply decorating your house in a neutral way, which makes it more appealing to a broader market of buyers.

10 ways to attract buyers with home staging

1. Paint the rooms in your house in neutral colours. This will appeal to the broader market. Imagine having 100 viewers in your house and your rooms are painted in bright vibrant colours. You may get 5 % who have the same taste in colours as you but what about the other 95%; they will be put off by the amount of work they have to do to change the colour scheme. Painting your house in neutral colours is one of the most effective ways of adding value to our house and one of the cheapest and easiest to achieve.
2. Clear the junk. Nobody wants to view a property if all the rooms are full of junk, it puts you in a bad light and might make the viewers think there is a lot more work they need to do to make it their own. This is basic stuff but you would be surprised at the amount of people who do not clear the junk before viewers come to view their home.
3. Fix all outstanding repairs. Another easy way to make your house more attractive. Fix the leaking tap, patch the holes in the wall, oil the squeaky doors, and replace cracked tiles. These are only a few of the repairs many people have in their homes.
4. Depersonalise your home. If you have a lot of personal photographs on the wall and throughout your house take them down and box them for your new house. Prospective buyers want to imagine themselves living in a new house and find it harder to do this when you have the family photos all over the house. This is purely psychological but it does make a difference.
5. Put excess furniture in storage. Almost every home has furniture that is surplus to requirement and can be put into storage to make the rooms in your house seem larger.
6. Rearrange your rooms. This again is to give the illusion of more space. The more floor space a viewer can see the better. This is another psychological factor and the more floor space a viewer can see the bigger they think the room is.
7. Clean the house. Another often-overlooked way sellers can put viewers off their house is to not clean it. Clean all the windows thoroughly, clean sinks and toilets, re-grout your shower cubicle tiles, re-grout floor tiles, open all windows to let fresh air into the house, put clean towels out, clear away any dirty washing.
8. Let the light in. Open curtains and blinds to their maximum or in some cases take the curtains down altogether. This will let a lot more light in and make it feel more airy and spacious.
9. Clean the garden. This amazes me as well the amount of people who do not tidy up their garden. Your garden can be a major selling factor so make sure it is clean, tidy and presentable. Re-seed the lawn, get rid of the weeds, clear any rubbish away.
10. Kerb appeal. You have probably heard this one a million times, if you watch all the home makeover shows on TV, but it is a great tip. Make the front of your house as attractive and inviting as possible. This is the ‘first impressions’ effect, whereby viewers who see a great looking house from the outside are more forgiving of any minor problems inside the house.

It is plain to see how just one of the above factors would be sufficient to stir great interest in property investment.

No matter what your reason is for choosing property investment, there are several crucial factors to consider before searching for the right property.

There are many methods which can be applied to property investment, dependent on your goals and what you want to achieve. Without going into further depth and variation, this can be broken down into two general aims:

1. Buy to Sell – Buying and selling investment property within the short term for profit.
2. Buy to Let – Buying and letting to achieve a rental income and accumulate equity, normally over the mid to long term.

It is important to decide which route to go down, as this will very much depend on the property most suitable to invest in and how best to set this up.

Property investment can be extremely rewarding but should only be entered into with due care and consideration. There are many crucial factors to consider which will determine which direction you will move in when considering the endless property investment possibilities.

Careful consideration must be given to location. You must decide if you wish to invest in your local area which you may be more familiar with, or invest in a current “hot spot” which may provide more attractive investment options.

The more adventurous investor may be interested in overseas property investment. A great deal of care and research should be given to any investment property proposition, particularly when looking overseas where the purchase process, tax liabilities, etc. could be very different to the UK.

Property price must also be considered, with widely varying properties available at all levels of investment. Investors tend to be guided by the capital they wish to invest in any one property.

A mortgage broker or lender will be able to advise you on how much you can borrow to invest in property, along with any further costs or fees involved. A Solicitor can also advise you on the legal costs, disbursements (local search fees, etc.) and stamp duty cost if applicable.

Once these factors have been considered, the next step in property investment would be to search for suitable properties and undertake the essential research to minimize risk and maximize profit.

You can never do too much research. Speak to local agents to get feedback from the perspective of property professionals.

Properties which are ideal for investment will inevitably sell quickly. Time consuming research can unfortunately result in astute investors missing out on some great investment opportunities. The internet can be a great place to carry out a large portion of the required research in a fraction of the time.

The above serves well as an introduction to property investment and the first steps which should be undertaken. By gaining a good perspective of your goals and aims and by not deviating from your chosen investment plan, you should form a solid basis for successful property investment.

Has your number been called yet in the UK or are you just looking for a better overall mortgage rate? If so, now is the time to start looking while interest rates are still reasonable. The hardest part is finding the right person or loan broker to work with (at least in my experience) but with the internet at your fingertips, it’s much easier.

As I mentioned in my previous post about researching home insurance policies, using a search engine comparison site is the best way to compare and find deals catered for you. This is also true when it comes to just about anything these days. Before I order things online, I use shopping comparison sites like Froogle. When I’m searching for health insurance I’ve used ehealthinsurance.com. Now, if you’re living in the UK and looking for a remortgage, I would try a site like remortgage.org.

Remortgage.org makes it easy to speak with a mortgage professional for free advice regarding a remortgage in the UK. After completing 3 steps on their site, you’ll get access to one of their professional remortgage brokers. They will then answer your questions regarding advice on a mortgage or remortgage in the UK. I have yet to personally try them out since I don’t live in the UK but their site is pretty clean and useful which presumably means their staff is professional too.