Your pre-viewing checklist and box..

What is a pre-viewing checklist and box? In short, it’s the easiest way to be ready to welcome potential buyers into your home and be confident it’s showing at its best.

This is really the minimum you should be doing before a viewing. It’s constructed on the assumption you have read some of our earlier guides to preparing your home to sell.

A pre-viewing checklist will vary from house to house, of course, depending on whether you have children, pets or are asking your estate agent to conduct the viewings, but there are some basics that apply to every home. Here’s what we suggest you have on your pre-viewing checklist, as a minimum, for that last half hour quick check before viewings commence:

1. Tidy the hallway: nobody arriving to view a home gets a best first impression arriving in a hallway filled with coats, bags and shoes
2. Tidy the kitchen: check the surfaces have been wiped down. Remove pet food bowls and give that area a quick spritz and wipe down
3. Light your scented candles in the kitchen, the living room and the main bedroom
4. Switch off overhead lights and switch on table lamps, bedside lights and under cupboard lights in the kitchen. We have talked before about the power of great lighting to create a welcoming ambience, have a read here
5. Check all the beds have been made.
6. Check the toilet is clean!

Your pre-viewing box

What is a pre-viewing box? It’s a box of all the bits and bobs you want to use to make your home look gorgeous, but don’t want out all the time. Think premium scented candles or diffusers; new and plump cushions to swap in for your usual ones that may be a little squashed and worn; fresh, fluffy white towels with no makeup or toothpaste stains; fresh bed linen for the masterbed to swap in just for viewing days; colourful throws for the sofa, or the end of the bed or just ‘casually’ over a kitchen chair; seat cushions for outside furniture… If you think about how you would like to dress your house to impress your viewers, but you don’t want to risk these pretty extra pieces getting caught up in the usual melee of daily life, this is what needs to go in your box. 

You might think this all makes planning for viewings rather tiresome, but a cared-about home that feels welcoming and looks ready to move into, sells, so it’s worth that little extra effort to set your home above every other one on the buyer’s viewing list, we would argue. And we are the experts!

Eddie – Friday 28th April (Picture used from Manor Drive, Chorlton).