Most people overlook one simple truth about the home viewing experience. Potential buyers won’t just be viewing the property with their sense of sight; they’ll be engaging all their 5 senses before arriving at conclusion how they feel about the property.
Obviously, getting your home professionally cleaned and staged is the first step. But, if you really want to capture the hearts of your potential buyers, you have to go the extra mile. Here are our top tips for how you can engage all 5 of their senses as they come in for a viewing. You might be surprised — most of these are things that most homeowners already do for their own homes!
1. Sight
We urge you to avail yourself of a professional home staging service when preparing your property for sale. Regardless of whether your property is furnished, home staging is a vital step of the process. You’re going to need professionals to dress up your property for the mass market. This entails furnishing your property in such a way where it looks neat, clean, and simple. Doing so facilitates the emotional connection between your potential buyers and your property. If your property is furnished to your specific tastes and preferences, it’s going to be difficult for them to form this connection, and in turn, purchase your property.
Aside from this, we also encourage you to highlight how well-lit your property is. Turn on all your light fixtures, draw your curtains, and let the light in. It may seem like overkill to do this, but put yourself in the shoes of your potential buyers. Imagine how deflating it’d be for them to make the trip to your property only to find themselves in a dimly lit room.
2. Sound
Noise Problems
Living in the city has its own unique set of headaches: one such problem some people might have is noise. Newer properties are more likely to face this issue because new families are moving in and renovations are going on regularly.
The easiest way to insulate your property from outside sound is to close off all windows and turn on your aircon!
For private properties, you can arrange viewings on weekends to avoid renovation noises altogether.
Play Some Music!
If your property has no noise problems, you can still be proactive. Don’t forget your goal is to positively color their senses! With the power of a well-curated playlist or album, you can soothe your potential buyers’ ears. Now, we don’t want to doubt your taste in music, but you have to be careful when choosing what music to play for your potential buyers. Loading up an energetic pop playlist can easily put off some buyers, or even make some feel anxious.
You have to give a lot of thought into the music you play for your guests. Recall the music you hear when you last visited a posh restaurant or boutique, those will be the type of music to go for. We recommend playing the album Scenery by Ryo Fukui for your guests. It’s a soothing, piano-driven take on jazz standards of the early-mid 20th century. We don’t quite know how to explain it, but there’s nothing better to imply class and comfort than a great jazz album. Feel free to reach out to us for more recommendations!
3. Smell
It goes without saying, but the first step to making your property smell great is to clean it. And we don’t mean just giving your furniture a light dusting; you have to really clean up your property. We urge you to avail of professional cleaning services to give your property a deep clean. Not only would this alleviate any foul odors that might still linger on your property, but this will also ensure there won’t be unsightly dirt marks marring any of the surfaces of your property. It’s a win-win!
However, if you’ve already gone this route as you’ve prepared your property for sale, there is still more you can do. The simplest thing you can do is to have flowers in each of the important rooms of your property. Namely, the bedroom, living room, and kitchen. We recommend you place diffusers in these rooms. Select different scents for each room to convey different moods.
For example, maybe you want your living room to feel relaxing, so you can opt for a light lavender scent here. Maybe you want to evoke the feeling of the Ritz-Carlton for your bedroom; you can use the same scent they do here. Some rooms might not even require the use of a diffuser in the first place. You can bake cookies or brew coffee in your kitchen. What evokes the feeling of home more than a batch of fresh cookies and a pot of great coffee? This ties well into the next point, as the sense of smell is closely tied to the sense of…
4. Taste
We won’t go too in-depth here since there’s only so much you can do, but there are a few things to keep in mind if you intend on feeding your guests. The first thing is to only opt to prepare sweets for your guests if you intend on giving them food. Things like cookies as we mentioned, or even pastries if you really feel like it would work well. You can then easily pair this with coffee or tea for your guests to really make them feel like they’re at home.
However, regardless of how great your laksa recipe is, a property viewing isn’t the right time for it. The entire property could end up smelling like shrimp! While that may be a good thing for some people, it’ll easily ruin any efforts you’ve made to introduce pleasant smells into your property. Aside from this, full meals like this also introduce the risk of your guests making a mess.
5. Touch
While we mentioned earlier that giving your property a light dusting wouldn’t be enough to clean it, it’s still an incredibly important thing to take care of! Now, if you’ve had your place properly cleaned this shouldn’t be an issue. But, if you don’t have the time to sort that out before entertaining your first guest, you should be incredibly mindful of any dust or dirt being present on any furniture you have. If your guests run their fingers through any of your furniture and find dust, this will be a huge problem.
Aside from this, there’s also one crucial thing you have to take care of to ensure that your guests’ sense of touch is being paid attention to. It’s incredibly important, so don’t scoff at this suggestion, but you have to…
make sure all your doors function properly.
What do we mean by this? For instance, let’s look at sliding doors. These things easily get stuck over time, making it difficult to open and close them. Other types of doors can find themselves getting stuck as well, or even squeaking. We recommend either getting them looked at by a home DIY expert, or lubing these with some tried and tested WD40. Just make sure that you won’t find yourself in a panic when you see a guest reaching towards a specific door, and you’ll be fine.
You engage all these senses while living in your home! So remember: your guests will too as they inspect your property.
While this may seem like a lot, just remember that making a decision like this is a huge commitment not just on your end, but for your potential buyer as well. Even just one negative thought when coming into your property for a home viewing can derail any chances of them opting to choose your property for purchase. However, if you keep our tips in mind, you’ll definitely be finding yourself signing over your property to a buyer in no time. Good luck!
