If you google ‘What percentage of gross revenue should be spent on marketing in business’ the answers come up with anything from 5% to 20% for a smaller business. Marketing a product is considered important enough for virtually every business these days to be allocating a significant proportion of their annual revenue to either holding their market share or increasing their product visibility.
Why Use a Professional Property Presentation Service?
In the UK when home owners sell what is usually their greatest asset it is unusual to assign any budget to the marketing except for a small estate agency fee. Many homes are photographed on an agent’s mobile phone and loaded onto the online property portals with no real thought about how they look. A strange world where we are likely to put more thought into cleaning and polishing a car for sale than for something of more than twenty times the value, a home.
Professional property presentation bridges this gap. An experienced consultant will be able to advise on everything from the decoration through to the placement of flowers. The difference, combined with professional photography, that this makes to photos is huge see our projects for many examples of before and after photos.
How much does it cost to present a home using a professional service? This is the question we are most often asked. Usually, the cost will fall somewhere between 0.5% and 2% of the guide price of the house. This might include some decorating or providing furniture to replace dated furniture or to fill gaps. The service can be as little as a few hundred pounds for help with de-cluttering, or as much as 2.5% for a complete redecoration and providing new furniture and accessories for every room. Even combined with an average estate agency fee of 1.5% this is still well below the lowest band of a marketing budget for a business or the price drop an agent will suggest if the home fails to attract a buyer after a few weeks!
Many properties are on the market for months before the vendors consider professional property presentation as an alternative to the inevitable price drop. At this stage a vendor has already taken a drop of typically 5 or 6%. In most cases half of that percentage would have been much better spent in the preparation stage of the sale to make the house look fabulous on photos and for viewings to achieve a near-asking price offer before any drop.
External Presentation
The presentation of your property has a huge impact on the sale. It helps create the emotional link that makes a buyer fall in love with your home. Not only is the interior presentation important but the exterior too.
When a buyer approaches your property the first thing they see is the exterior of the property, first impressions count, the street appeal is a crucial factor to consider before viewings. Something you may want to consider is:
- Stand across the street and view your home from your buyer’s eyes
- Maintain the nature strip outside the property
- Ensure that driveways have been cleaned you may even want to lay fresh gravel
- Minor repairs pay off, check the condition of external walls, gutters and woodwork a fresh lick of paint can go a long way.
- Repair broken gates or fences
- Window cleaning, both inside and out
