One of the key factors in selling a house is “kerb appeal”, this is making the house look good before you set foot inside. However many people often overlook this, and in doing so they not only risk losing out on a quick sale, they also potentially lose £1000s on the selling price.

Enhancing kerb appeal can be considered in several key areas; garden, elevations, and roof.

Gardens: This is the simple one to deal with, just a few hours work can transform a garden and it makes a huge difference. For an average front garden of a semi detached house you could get a gardener to do a makeover for less than £200 including a few shrubs!

Elevations: The main area to focus on is paintwork, if you have pvc double glazing already then all you need to do is make sure the walls look in good condition. In most cases refreshing the paintwork, if you have unpainted brick or stone make sure that any bits of missing pointing are filled. It may be that you have moss or other dirt on the foot of the elevations, this can be simply removed with a power washer. Overall the cost of refreshing the elevations should be just a few hundred pounds.

Roof gutters: An area often overlooked because people think it will cost too much, but beware, any buyer is likely to think the same! One area of roof maintenance if cleaning the gutters, fascias and soffits; ensuring there is no grass growing out of the gutters and no unsightly moss/fungi on the fascias. The cost of this type of work should be less than £200 for the average semi, a small invesmtent for the benefits.

Roof tiles: Roof cleaning and roof moss removal can have a huge benefit. Green algae and roof moss not only looks unsightly it can damage some roof tiles in the longer term. A professional company such as “UK Roof Cleaning” can clean the roof of an average semi from around £1500.

So in total, if you need the full external makeover including garden, elevations and roof the costs should be no more than £2000. It may seem a lot but for a house selling at £200,000 it is just 1% of the value, much more than this will be lost in the sales negotiation!