Top features that reduce your home’s value

Top features that reduce your home’s value

Whilst the housing market has taken a down-turn in previous years – even pre-Corona, thanks to the Stamp Duty holiday, properties are the on the move again. If you’re considering putting your house on the market, whether it’s in the next few months or in the future, there are some things that could negatively impact the value of your home. In fact, a recent survey by Hammonds Furniture discovered that some features could knock an average of £49,471 off your home.

Over personalisation

Of course, you want your house to feel like home, and it should be decorated to suit your personal taste, but when it comes to selling, less is more. Even if you love that over the top statement wallpaper, according to nearly a quarter of buyers in the survey, ugly wallpaper can put someone off making an offer on a home. Typically, modestly decorated homes with a muted and neutral colour palette are the most desirable. Using light and clean background colours will help prospective buyers see themselves in the property.

Bad presentation

Selling a home is about more than selling bricks and mortar, you’re selling a lifestyle and an aspiration. The easiest way to transform your home into somewhere prospective buyers can see themselves living is ensuring the home is clutter free. Custom-made built-in wardrobes are a great way to maximise on space and storage – and make a perfect hiding space for all the things you’re just not ready to throw away.

Illegal home improvements

If you’ve done any work to your property during the time you’ve lived there, whether you’ve had an extension or created a loft-conversion, make sure you’ve obtained the appropriate planning permission and building regulations. If you haven’t got the right documents, you may find you might have to pay for them retrospectively before agreeing a sale, and in some cases it could raise concerns for your buyers, and they may pull out.

General disrepair

If you’ve lived in a property for a  number of years, you may have stopped noticing the mould in the shower or the chipped paint in the hallway, but these are all things estate agents will see, and they could devalue the property. Before inviting agents round to value your home look at your house with the eyes of someone seeing it for the first time. You’ll be amazed at how many scuff marks there are on the walls and how much chipped paint there is on door frames. In fact, those stains on your carpets that have ‘been there for years’, could put nearly 27% of buyers off.

Odours

So called ‘nose-blindness’ occurs when you’re so used to a certain odour you can no longer smell it. All homes have an odour, with some being more pungent than others. Potential buyers could be put off by the odour of your home, whether it’s the smell of mould in a bathroom, a pervading foody smell in the kitchen, or that wet dog smell. And while we may be a nation of dog lovers, potential purchasers aren’t – with 37% saying pet smells negatively influence how they feel about a prospective home.

To reduce the unpleasant smells, use odour-eating cleaning products and invest in plug-in fragrance diffusers. If you’re selling your home in winter choose rich scents like cinnamon and oud, and for summer months choose lighter fragrances like citrus and jasmine.