April 2017 Newsletter

PROPERTY STYLING

By David Servi

There’s no magic formula or clever algorithm to help you calculate how much to spend on your property before you sell it or let it: the best way to avoid waste or missed opportunities is to call in the experts.
If the outlay is too much it could be a waste of money, and the property may have sold just as well without the pre-sale paint, or new carpet, or even the new kitchen. If too little is spent on the property, potentially valuable visual appeal could be lost. Buyers and tenants might turn away from a shabbier house or apartment, failing to see how the property could look with a few thousand dollars spent on it.
In the end, only those professionals with long years of experience in the real estate field can provide reliable advice on pre-sale renovations and overhauls.
Spencer & Servi director David Servi has been selling and letting property in Sydney for decades, and he can instinctively gauge how much to spend and where to spend it before a property is put on the market.
“Some properties hardly need anything done”, he says. “Others we spend weeks and weeks working on. It all depends on the house or apartment, the sorts of things that might need doing, the property’s visual appeal and the costs of repair or renovation”.
Most of the properties marketed by Spencer & Servi need a certain amount of tidying up, David adds. “With the Internet, drone shots, videos and high quality glossy photography, visual attraction is all-important: the property’s image should get attention in a positive way”.
Some properties need more than a lick of paint, and a very few others are in such a state of disrepair that it’s preferable for the owners to simply leave them as they are and sell them to a buyer in the market for a “fixer-upper”.
Spencer & Servi has marketed these sorts of properties, where the value lies in the land and the location, rather than the building. Some have been in such a state that signs need to be posted to warn potential buyers not to walk on certain parts of the floor. In cases like those, David would advise the owner to put it on the market as is and market it as an ideal property for a home-renovator, or perhaps a developer.
Annie Hodgson, who has worked with David for 18 years, says a cosmetic uplift can make all the difference to most properties, whether it’s reconfiguring the layout of a home, moving a bedroom to a room that may once have been a study, or an entertaining area to a better location. Even a little thought about what is hanging on the walls can make all the difference to a room, Annie says.
With a slightly shabby or “tired” property, she and David might consider recommending new paint both inside and outside, new carpet, a garden overhaul and possibly new lighting and the replacement of kitchen and bathroom accessories – door knobs, handles, and maybe even counter-tops.
 “You’d be amazed at how much can be accomplished with just $20,000”, she says, “and that’s such a small proportion of the value of most properties we see”.