Seller Tips: Boosting Your Curb Appeal When Selling Your Home

We often hear about the importance of curb appeal when looking to sell a home.  Curb appeal reflects the way your house looks from the street (i.e. the curb). The first impression a visitor receives upon arriving characterizes the curb appeal of a home, so it is important to bolster this appeal by painting our shutters, installing new windows, turning on the lights, and opening the drapes.

Seller Tips: Boosting Your Curb Appeal When Selling Your Home This is all certainly true, and all these proposed steps can improve a home’s initial impression, but curb appeal is ultimately less about the house and more about what sits in front of it: the front yard.  A visitor’s first impression is inevitably shaped just as much by the house as it is by the accompanying grass, vegetation, driveway, walkway, trees, and anything else that contextualizes it.  The front yard also provides the final impression that a visitor receives upon leaving; their last visual as they drive away.  Those exit signs in their mind should be pointing them back to the home for a second viewing, not away for good.

So it stands to reason that the front yard plays a tremendous role in a home’s curb appeal – and, by extension, in the overall impression that it leads.  If you are looking to sell your Warner Robins home, sprucing up your front yard is consequently a great way to make your property more attractive to potential buyers. Here are a few tips on making this happen:

Trim and mow. First and foremost it is important that your front yard looks clean and contained. This can easily be accomplished by taking some time to mow the lawn, trim the bushes, and perhaps even cut back some branches on the trees.

Make it colorful. If you’re selling your home during the spring, summer, or fall, making your front yard look lush, bright, and colorful is perhaps the best way to boost curb appeal. Darken your lawn by using fertilizer. Plant flowers along the edge of your house. Clear the tree canopy to allow sunlight to filter in.

Repave the driveway. Your driveway is just as much a part of the front yard as the lawn, at least as far as curb appeal is concerned.  Moreover, a driveway can make a quick and lasting impression on a visitor. If it is cracked and grey, they may subconsciously view the whole front yard as bland and unkempt. If it is smooth and dark, however, the driveway can contrast the boldness of the grass and give your property a sleeker look.

Install outdoor lighting. If you’re showing your home during the winter, especially if you live in a snowy and colder climate, you aren’t likely to benefit from fertilizer or flowers when looking to bolster your curb appeal. But you can install ground-level outdoor lights to ring the driveway, the walkway, or to illuminate your home. This can be especially helpful when visitors come during the gloomy twilight hours of winter.

Hopefully these tips can help you improve the perception of your front yard and boost your home’s curb appeal.  While doing so cannot make up for an unappealing interior, it can go a long way towards keeping your home on a potential buyer’s mind – an important quality in today’s tough housing market .  If they are otherwise on the fence, it just might be enough to secure the deal.

About Anita Clark Realtor

Anita Clark has written 610 posts on this blog.

Anita is a residential Real Estate Agent in Warner Robins Georgia, with Coldwell Banker Access Realty (478) 953-8595, aiding buyers and sellers with all their real estate questions on her Warner Robins blog.