Renovation Tips - Sell your house using Street Appeal!

Every year, thousands of Australians search for a property to turn into their home and castle. But what the majority of home buyers don't realise is they're nearly always deciding this important decision based on emotion. Have you ever heard, oh, I just knew it was the right house as soon as I saw it, or I could just feel it was the right one straight away. And very few question why? Now, we all know that the first impressions are important, but did you know that most home buyers make up their minds within the first 30 to 60 seconds? In fact, on average, buyers only spend three to six minutes viewing a property during an open for inspection. So they've pretty much made up their minds for before they've even reached the front door. So now that you've heard this, you might be thinking to yourself that having a house that looks pretty good from the street is kind of important. And you'd be right. Having street appeal is not only very important, it's critical. Hi, I'm Jane Slacksmith and in this short video I'm going to share with you one of the best techniques available to renovators to completely change the street appeal of a property. There are several ways that you can improve the street appeal of a property. Landscaping, a new front fence or even a new driveway all can work together to give a potential buyer that positive first impression. But for this property, I think I have the perfect solution. So we know renovation is all about perception, no more so than its street appeal. And it's important that we actually look at the front of the property and look what we can do to improve it. Now, this is not going to be a cheap option, but, you know, I reckon that a bit of render on this property is actually going to make it really lift in value and perception and it's going to look great from the street. Rendering starts at about $40 a square metre. Now, to work out how many square meters, simply multiply the length of each wall by the height. The length times height equals the square. Now, because this is actually painted brickwork, we're going to have to use an acrylic render, which is more expensive, but it's just what we have to do. Normally we'd use a sanded cement and unfortunately we can't do that here. Now, we're going to get rid of these 70 seals, we're going to ask the renderer to cut them off, create a nice profile here. And, you know, this rendering is really going to add so much value, it's going to make this property look really great. Acrylic render contains an adhesive that allows the render to stick to painted brickwork. Acrylic render is not as thick as traditional sand and cement render and therefore several coats needs to be applied to straighten the wall or make the surface flat. First a base coat, then a second coat. The polystyrene float is used. The final coat will have the paint colour mixed in with the render, which also saves on additional painting. Before the renderer began, the old brick window sills were removed and the gap was filled with a mixture of sand and cement. We've used coloured render in a traditional render finish or sand finish, which just looks great. The total cost of the rendering was $4,400. What an enormous change it has made to the street appeal, which means we now have the best chance of a potential buyer making an emotional connection with our property. With a bit of luck, there might be more than one. If you enjoyed this video, then please hit the like button to let me know. And after hitting the like button, scroll down and tell me some of the ideas that you plan to use in your next renovation. I really love to hear your feedback and I'll do my best to answer any questions or comment on your comments personally. Thanks for watching and keep an eye out for my next video. Sam.