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Top Curb Appeal Articles:
Your front door says a lot about the entire house
It is estimated that buyers develop an attitude about a property within the first 15 seconds of seeing the house. That attitude is then reinforced by everything else they see as they go through the house.
Your lawn is the gateway to your home
Most people overlook their lawns when putting their house on the market. Yet an ignorned lawn or a lawn that has become thin and weedy only detracts from that important first impression.
5 tips from HGTV'S expert Brad Frazier
"People get a preconceived notion of what they'll find on the inside of a house, based on what they see on the outside," said Brad Frazier who works as a landscape designer in San Francisco on the HGTV shows "Curb Appeal" and "Landscape Smart."
1. Think of color. People in the Midwest are conservative with colors and tend to go for tans and beiges. As a general rule, the trim and doors should be one shade darker than the body of the house. People tend to look at the door as the weight of the house.
2. Consider the scale of your home vs. the scale of the landscape. If you have a two-story home, you want landscaping that rises upward to match the height.
3. Make sure there's a clear view of your house. That may mean trimming trees and shrubs.
4. Don't be afraid to paint stone or brick work. It's an inexpensive solution to updating the look of your home.
5. Add color with foliage and blooming plant, but don't go overboard. Too much of a good thing distracts the eye.
Wherever you live, proper landscaping can enhance both your enjoyment of your home and its ultimate resale value. The first thing you probably noticed about your home was its curb appeal. Even though your home’s appearance from the street is only part of creating the perfect outdoor environment, first impressions are often lasting ones for buyers.
Yes, you can get some creative ideas from popular HGTV shows such as “Curb Appeal” and “Landscaper’s Challenge,” but flash and dash from someone else’s plan won’t necessarily work to your home’s advantage.
Homeowners are finding that creating interest and harmony on the outside is far trickier than making upgrades to the inside. The sheer variety of trees (evergreen and deciduous), flowering plants (annual or perennial), and the walls, paths, benches, arbors and pergolas that landscapers call “hardscape” can create a dizzying array of choices and potential missteps.
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It all starts with having great
curb appeal
It all starts at the curb: make sure your first impression is memorable and favorable
You know the basic curb appeal storyline: If potential buyers don’t like what they see from the street, they might never get inside the front door. You might have done the same at some point yourself when shopping for a home.
A remodeled kitchen and bath can help sell a home, but curb appeal is what gets buyers through the door,” says Betty Jane Garrett, a licensed agent with Paradigm Realty in Oklahoma. “If they don’t like what they see from the street chances are they won’t waste time going inside.”
Fortunately, unless you’re living in an Addams Family-like spookhouse, there are plenty of quick and easy ways to spiff up your home and give potential buyers a reason to come inside.
Yards should look appealing and inviting, a place where you’d like to relax on a pleasant spring afternoon. An easy way to do that is to keep the grass freshly groomed – don’t forget the edging – and plant beds freshly mulched, says John Merrill, editor of Landscape-America. According to Merrill, you should trim overgrown trees and shrubs that may have looked ok when they were planted, but now may have become too large.
Make sure the lawn is neatly mown and edged. Flower beds should be mulched (avoid Cypress mulch for ecological reasons).
During the growing season, make sure to add some potted flowers on either side of the entrance. This is particularly attractive even if planted in over-sized clay pots. Keep these plants well watered. Click here for additional landscape tips.
Creating curb appeal
You must grab a buyer's interest from the curb if you want to sell the home for top dollar. Home buyers will sometimes refuse to go into a house with an unkempt yard, sagging doors or peeling paint. In fact, home shoppers will often develop an attitude toward your house within the first 15 seconds of seeing your property. That attitude is then reinforced (rightly or not) by everything else they see, if they decide to look further, from those first 15 seconds. So, even if you can't afford to paint the entire exterior, get that front yard and entry into tip-top shape before putting your house on the market.
Creating curb appeal is one of the best ways of improving your chances of making a quicker sale. Most people make a judgment on the property as soon as they see it based on what they see. If they see overgrown shrubs, dirty windows, stained gutters and peeling paint, they immediately have made a negative snap judgment about the property without ever seeing the inside.
Personality Plus
Engaging the senses generates a feeling in the mind of a potential buyer. If there is no engagement, then prospective home buyer will have no feelings about your property. No feelings is almost the same as negative feelings.
Obviously, you don't want to engage negative feelings or no feelings about your house. You want to help buyers remember your house as the one that felt like it was coming home for them. That is the personality you want your house to exude.
Engaging those senses, particular those of sight, should begin when the prospect first arrives at your property. They should be able to see the entry clearly. That entry should be inviting and everything else in the front yard to help lead the eye to the entry. Those are positive images you can embed in the prospect's mind by the way you stage your lawn and landscape.
With a tightening real estate market, the home seller needs every advantage in their favor without over spending. Giving your house some favorable memory power is key. That means lots of personality without the person.
In other words, you want a house that is memorable from the prospects view, not your view. You want to remove your own personality from your property. Let home-buying prospects, without too much imagination, see themselves sitting in your living room. If they can sit down at the kitchen table and can see themselves sitting there on a Sunday morning sipping a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper, you've done your job. If, in the house showing process, all a prospect can see is you, then you've failed BIG TIME! Don't put your house in that position.
How you maintain and design your home's exterior is as important as its interior. The front is the first thing people see upon arrival. You want to make that a good impression from the street.
Curb appeal is the first step in selling your house. If your house doesn't have curb appeal, then the odds are greatly reduced in selling the house quickly and for top dollar.
Everything you've done on the inside is for naught if you can't get a home-buyer to stop and look inside. That's why curb appeal is so important. Having great curb appeal helps open the front door to more home buyers and sets the stage for what's on the inside.
Change out-dated light fixtures, or add lights if you don't have some already. Light up your doorways, driveway and walkways. Better to have more lights at lower wattages than one, very bright one. Spotlights angled to highlight trees and bushes create a dramatic nighttime effect. Solar lights that charge during the day are easy to install yourself.
Paint the front door a bright color. Nothing says welcome home like a cheerful front entry. It’s an easy affordable way to freshen up a paint scheme without having to repaint the entire exterior.
Exterior house painting can be a major expense, yet, if your house has extremely faded paint, peeling paint, or an unusual color, painting may be your only option.
Color choice should be based in part on what your neighborhood likes. It's not good to stand out from the rest of the neighborhood. One pink house on the block in the midwest can be a major fault, while a pink house in Miami might be perfectly acceptable.
If the house just looks drab, but the paint seems to be in ok condition, it may just need to be power washed.
Trim work is extremely important and one of the areas where peeling and cracking paint are likely to show up first. Select a trim color that compliments the rest of the house's color.
Garage doors are an extremely important focal point of almost any curb appeal undertaking. The garage door should be clean, non-sagging and look as though it should be part of the house and not an after-thought. Color of the garage door should match the rest of the house's exterior color scheme.
Options include aluminum, steel and wood, insulated or not, windows or not.
Another feature of the modern garage door is having an automatic garage door opener. The garage door opener doesn't have to be brand new, but it should be in good working order. The only time the garage door opener becomes an issue for selling your house is when they don't work.
Unless you don't have a driveway or garage, the condition of the driveway itself should be a major consideration. Today, the most common driveway materials are blacktop, concrete, pavers, and gravel. The only reason you might consider replacing the driveway prior to sale is if the driveway is in extreme disrepair or presents a hazard when walking/driving on it.
For maximum curb appeal, consider using pavers or stamped/stained concrete work. The increase in price for stamping is well worth the extra cost.
Flowers are classified as either annuals, perennials, and biennials. Annuals grow from seeds and flower their first and only year. Perennials grow from seed also and establish themselves the first year, but don't normally flower until the following year. These flowers will sometimes replant themselves and flower for many years to come. Biennials grow as a small plant during the year they are planted. In the second year they will bloom and then perish.
Like all plants, flowers have distinct preferences as to soil, light, water and temperature. For a flower to be successful in your landscape, it must be suited to your growing conditions and climate.
Curb appeal info
Curb appeal tells
the story
A home with curb appeal speaks volumes about its occupants. A well-kept and maintained exterior hints of a homeowner who is aware of his surroundings and takes time to tend to things of value.
Common problems that detract from a home's exterior are plantings that appear too linear from the street, shrubs planted too close to the house, the absence of trees and other plantings that add height and create interest, cracked or peeling paint, dingy windows and an unattractive front door.
Adding curb appeal
Clean your home's siding and front porch. Make sure all mold, mildew and dirt daubers are removed. Clean windows.
Trim overhanging tree branches and prune hedges.
Keep the lawn mowed and don't forget to edge along sidewalks and driveways. Remove weeds from flower pots and beds.
Accessorize your home. Consider adding shutters
to frame the windows.
Give the home a fresh coat of paint and consider a new front door.
Update the front door by replacing the doorknob and adding a matching knocker. Include a door mat. Or polish existing hardware on the doors.
Add bold address numbers to the house that complement its architecture.
Frame the door with matching wall lanterns or add a post lantern to illuminate the walkway.
Accessorize the front porch with benches or settees and planters overflowing with flowers and greenery.