Stage Your Pool First, THEN Sell Your Home

Selling Your Home – Stage Your Pool First

If you want to sell your home, it’s imperative to get it looking good first. That includes your pool area. You can stage it to appeal to buyers of all types. If you do nothing to improve the appearance of your pool, you may detract from the home’s value. Value depends on many factors, from market trends to the preferences of each buyer to the appearance of the pool area itself.

Take a good long look at your pool area: have you let it go in recent years? Is it poorly maintained, run down and murky with cracked decking, broken fencing, and neglected landscaping? If so, you will have a more difficult time selling at the price you want.

Add more value to your overall asking price by implementing these tips.

Tips for Staging Your Pool

While you’ve likely heard about staging for the interior of a home, it can be done on the exterior as well. How your pool looks to prospective buyers is everything. Heed these pool staging tips:

• If a hot tub is part of your pool area, clean it to remove all dirt and mildew.
• Add a new hot tub cover if it is old, brittle, heavy or cracked.
• Make sure the fencing has no holes and stands upright. Gates must have working locks for safety.
• If it’s winter time, buy a safety cover instead of that old tarp you’ve been throwing on there. If it’s summer, don’t worry about a cover; just make sure the water is clean and clear.
• Clean the patio furniture or get a new set. Alternatively, hire a staging company to bring one in for the open house.
• You can do the same with the grill. Show prospective buyers how their summers could be: fun days by the pool barbecuing for the family.
• Remove weeds from cracks. Repair those cracks and patch them. Replace crumbling brick work.
• Power wash the decking to remove stains.
• Store any equipment, riding toys and accessories in a shed or garage.
• Scrub down the walls of the pool and clean all accessories, from ladders to railings.
• Hire a landscaper or pull a DIY job if you know what you’re doing. Install fresh mulching, flowers and plantings, as well as mowing, detailing and edging.
• Add trees, bushes and shrubs to complement the landscape, making sure the filter area is hidden by shrubs and flowers.
• Stow away all pool toys and floats.
• Remove leaves and debris from the pool, using a skimmer and the pool’s vacuum.
• Shock the pool. Make sure the water is crystal clear.