MATTERS
APPEARANCE
Utilise these renovation
tricks on the outside of
your home – and reap the
rewards on auction day
WORDS JOHANNA LEGGATT
N
o matter how fantastic the
inside of your home looks, if
the garden is overgrown, the
letterbox has adopted an ungainly lean,
and the fence paint is peeling of like
a bad case of sunburn, then very few
people are likely to fall in love with it.
Property experts always extol the
importance of ‘kerbside appeal’ – and
with good reason, too: very few buyers
will get out of the car for a shabby facade.
‘he exterior is absolutely critical,’
says Jo Powell, founder of Victorian
company 3 Pea’s Property Styling.
‘If you think about the process that
most people go through, it’s very much
photo-driven. hey see a house on the
market and then they do a drive-by,
often before it’s open for inspection. If
they don’t like what they see, they just
say no way and move on.’
Steve Jovcevski, property expert
at comparison site Mozo, agrees
wholeheartedly. ‘Sellers often focus on
staging the interior, which is important,
but it shouldn’t be done at the expense
of the outside,’ he says. ▶
Handyman.net.au JULY 2018 73
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