Selling my house viewing tomorrow not ready should I put them off

I am selling my three bed semi which we only ever bought as a stop gap while we were building but now we are ready to sell it as we hope to have the nw house ready in the next two months.
Anyway we put it up for sale on Tuesday and we have our first viewing tomorrow evening and I am not ready for it, thought it would take a while to get viewings and I would have the weekend to de-clutter, need to remove a cot, loads of clothes, boxes, re-hang curtains, and generally get the place looking ship shape.
Would it be better to take tomorrow off work and do a rush job and get it looking as good as possible in the day or put the viewers off until Monday and get the place looking ship-shape?
Which would put a potential buyer off more having to wait until MOnday to see our house or coming to see the house when it is not perfect.
The viewing is at five in the evening so I could get a lot done tomorrow but not the finishing touches......\
What to do?

I would cancel it to be honest. If the messy house dissuaded only one potential customer, he or she could turn out to be the buyer. Also try and get the auctioneer to postpone it until Saturday. More people would be around then anyway and it would give you the extra day

At this stage, it's fairly short notice so I would do what I can & go ahead with the viewings.

I know there's been alot of articles about staging a property in the suplements recently, but I think for the average house it's a bit OTT and the average buyer will see around simple clutter & decor "problems".

In any case, it still seems to be a sellers market!

If you can contact the viewers in time, you could explain the dilemma to them and offer them the option? They'll probably appreciate your honesty, at least...

Yes didn't think of that option, the house is fine but full to the rafters with children's stuff, I will try to get as much of it out as possible and store it in my mother's house and then explain we weren't expecting such interest so soon.

Best of luck to you Bamhan, Im hoping to put mine up in the next few weeks too, hope the market in Limerick/Clare is still strong!!!!!!!

I think removing clutter is a great idea as it does give people a better view
of the size of the house.
However, if the house is likely to be popular with parents or parents to be,
kids stuff wont put them off too much.
We saw a lot of houses with wall to wall toys and we were quite impressed by how much stuff the house could hold.

On the other hand, the house we were selling was much more likely to appeal to a single person or couple with no kids, and was much too small for the 4 of us, so we were paranoid about hiding kids stuff for viewing.

I think the two main words are declutter and clean.
Viewers will not expect to see a sterile palace, but uncluttered enough to picture themselves in living your house.

Concentrate on
a. Clean bathroom/en-suite
b. Clean kitchen area, especially worktops.
c. Remove loose stuff lying around ie coats, shoes, papers...
d. No need for any major decoration changes - probably too late now anyway.

A neighbours 3bed semi recently sold within 1 week of going on sale. The owners live in the US and told the EA to delay the sale because there were clothes lying about the place and they wanted to get someone in to spruce it up. The EA, however, showed it to a couple over the weekend anyway, and they bought it for 10K above the asking price !

Go ahead with viewings! Make sure kitchen and bathrooms are clean. We viewed so many houses. To be honest, an experienced buyer is going to look past all that stuff. When we started putting our own house on show I was SOOO fussy. Got progressively lazier. House sold in 3 weeks for 23K over asking price.

Guys you all are giving me such hope!!! I would love if my house sold 23k over the asking price!!!!! I would be sooooooo happppppyyyyyyy

I went ahead with the viewing after spending all day Friday moving all our clutter out. It still could do with a bit of life being injected into it but I reckon we have done enough for a sale. I will give it a couple of weeks and then see if we need to do anything else.

we put our house on the market last week, spent €300 and 50 hours over the weekend and the difference is amazing, we touched up the paint work in each room, put a new semi solid floor in the downstairs loo, tidied up the garden, bought new plants for the house, and scrubbed every inch of the place... EA was amazed in the difference between
today and last week, hoping the effort will get us a quick sale.

Good luck with your sale Bamhan

You'd be amazed at how blinkered potential buyers can be! I sold a 3 year old property a few years back. It was a 3 bed semi in a seas of 3 bed semis and there were plenty for sale in the area, including one 2 doors up.

We didn't spend that much time and anything we spent money on was mostly stuff to make the place look nicer and more lived in that we took with us (plants etc.). However, we had 3 viewings and each time the place was spotless and looked really well. Within a few days 3 people started bidding and finally stopped €14k over asking price (at a relatively low asking price). So we were pleased.

I subsequently found out that the house 2 doors up, which was on sale for a week longer than ours had no bids by the time we sold and they were also looking for €14k less than us.

I wondered why would 3 people keep outbidding eachother on our hosue when one the exact same 2 doors up had no bids at €14k cheaper.

The answer: the one 2 doors up had been rented so it didn't look as well. But in fairness, the houses were 3 years old so to get the house 2 doors up to look like ours would have cost a hell of a lot less than €14k!

LollyMc said:

Guys you all are giving me such hope!!! I would love if my house sold 23k over the asking price!!!!! I would be sooooooo happppppyyyyyyy

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We looked at a 3 bed in North Co Dublin late year that was going for around €330. The same house now on market for €375!! House prices have gone crazy as we all know. When we were house shopping, the "rule" seemed to be that the real price would end up at about 20K over the asking price. So, generally, when we put a bid on a house starting at around 325K it ended up going for somewhere in the 340s. In the end we just put on offer of 10K over the asking price on the house we wanted, gave the EA a deadline to end of business that day and it worked. Offer accepted and they took it off the market.

Well Im living in a little sleepy village in the country and we are there 5 years. Hoping to put our house up for 185/190k and see what happens..........Garden is nearly quarter of an acre and is elevated. House is approx 25 years old and is a 3 bed semi..............we are 10 miles from Limerick City. Wonder how many houses you would get in Dublin for that price (hee hee!!!!!) ????? Id say tis few and far between.......

And

We are in the middle of buying right now, and when cluter won't put us off, we prefer a house that is "ready to move in", meaning, clean, not to much work to do, etc etc. After seen zillions of houses, I can tell that if only people could spend a bit of time, not money, just making the houses look a bit nicer, they will sell a bit quicker.
This is definitely a sellers markets, and people often forget that no matter how much more you are getting over the asking price, if you are to get another property, the same will happen to you....you will be expected to pay more than the asking price, meaning no real profit then.
Good luck to everyone trying to buy right now.

I'm also selling my house, it is in Kerry and an awful lot harder to shift that anything in Dublin, had to go for a lower price to get some interest but with only 3 viewings and a couple of bids we will have to accept what is going, so in our case a good clean up was essential.

We have given all the rooms a new lick of paint, put down new floors in 2 bedrooms (gave another room a total makeover with linen etc) and decluttered. Garden is next to tidy up and also need to give outside of house a lick of paint. When we moved in, we had to do nothing to it - it was great for First Time buyers.

Cati you are so right, we are on the hunt for another new house ourselves and we will prob have all the same opinions as our prospective buyers