How to add 20% to your home's value with garden staging

Updated: Jul 10, 2020

Outdoors. Yes, that's the way to add a whopping 20% to your home's value. Today buyers highly value outdoor spaces, so if you get this right, it can add as much as 20% to your home value.

Other Important Facts

Now, here’s some more important facts to consider:

#1 70% of buyers think a well-kept garden is the most desirable kerb appeal feature

#2 50% of buyers will try to knock between 10%-20% off a property's asking price if it looks unappealing from the outside.

#3 60% of buyers think a parking space is desirable

#4 95% of buyers look through your windows to look at the view, so make sure the windows are clean and there's a great view for your buyers

Simple Steps

Here’s our simple steps:

1. Where possible, create defined parking spaces

2. Create a patio area for eating, relaxing and socialising

3. Maximise any natural features you have in the garden eg. add a bench around a beautiful tree

4. Use easy to maintain plants and add pops of colour with seasonal planing eg. daffodils in Spring, to add interest and break you a space

5. Keep your spending in proportion to the home’s value

6. Design your space so it’s comparable with other homes in the same price range

7. Keep all areas well maintained

8. Keep the outdoor spaces simple so buyers don’t need to imagine themselves spending precious free time maintaining these spaces

9. Create privacy using fencing or planting

10. Use strategically placed plants to hide unsightly views. If your backing onto a house or industrial until, plant a hedge

11. Use decorative panels or creeper plants (and keep these well maintained) to create a feature or hide an unsightly view

12. Use trees and/or water features to dampen road noise

13. Traditionally, gardens were seen as spaces to be used at certain times of the year – not any more. With a vast array of outdoor heating solutions, its possible to make your garden welcoming most of the year – a fire pit can easily become a great talking point

14. Buyers look to gain as much floor space as they can so maximise this using structures such as outbuildings and sheds. They can have many uses - for hobbies or other leisure interests so are highly sought by buyers

How to Keep Up Appearances

While your property is on the market, here’s the things you need to do:

1. Clean gutters and soffits

2. Clean all windows, doors (including garage), lights and signs

3. Make a feature of the front entrance with interesting planting such as bay, buxus or ornamental grasses – use something that draws the eye. If there’s two external doors close to each other, make sure you highlight the main front door so buyers know where to come

4. Pressure wash your driveway or if its made of loose stone, remove weeds and dead leaves

5. Have a new doormat before the front door

6. If you have trees and hedges, cut and trim them back so they don’t become a safety hazard and/or block out natural light from your home

7. Mow the lawn and keep edges tidy

8. Tidy up the borders and fill them with plants if you’ve got bold patches

9. Add instant colour with seasonal planting eg. tulips in strategically placed pots, particularly in the front

10. Herbs eg. parsley, chives, rosemary planted in three’s can give instant impact and are cost effective solutions to add some instant interest

11. Stain any woodwork (fences, sheds)

12. Pressure wash your patio

13. Create a relaxing seating area so buyers can sit and enjoy the space you’ve created. On buyer viewings, if the weather is dry, add some cushions, throws, books to create an inviting space to relax

14. Tackle those repairs that you’ve put to one side eg. cracked paving, broken fence, broken gate

15. Make sure the doorbell works.

Plant ideas

There's lots of useful ideas for plants here.

How we maximise outdoor spaces

At sort style and stage, what sets us apart from other home stagers, is that we always recommend specific changes to maximise the value of your outdoor spaces.

Here's one of our favourite client projects - we created an outdoor oasis from a building site. What a transformation.