Get ready, buyers and sellers, Melbourne’s notoriously jam-packed Spring market is about to go off. If you're selling, you're in luck: we’ve trawled the Internet to find the best tips for getting your home ready for a spring sale. You’re welcome. 

After a stable winter, Melbourne’s busiest real estate season is about to kick off with many agents already excited about their upcoming schedules. With the warmer weather and longer days ahead, buyers will be out and about, checking out neighbourhoods and scoping out their potential future homes. And if you’re about to put your house on the market, be sure to get your home ready for what’s gearing up to be a big Spring with great supply and plenty of competition. 

Your Property Investment has a bunch of hot tips based on a pretty simple exercise: stand outside and inside your house and view it from every angle. What do you see? 

Stand outside the front of your house: does the fence need a lick of paint? Is the gate creaky? Does the lawn need a mow or does your garden need weeding? And what about the front door, is it looking a little weathered? Does your porch need to spend some quality time with a high pressure hose? Are the windows spotless? Do you need to get rid of all those dead pot plants you ignored over winter? Add some colour with freshly potted flowering plants, add some scent with some potted gardenias, get rid of that well-trodden welcome mat that’s been at every home you’ve ever lived in since you were 18. Look. At. Everything.

As for your backyard, do the same thing. Stand in your backyard and have a good look at what’s going on. Do you have a bunch of rugrats who have turned the backyard into their own personal playground/warzone? If so, get them to tidy up all their stuff and put their toys away. Just kidding, they’re not going to do that, YOU are. Put your garden tools away—as in stored neatly, not shoved into the shed à la that time you were a kid/single and would jam everything in to a cupboard and quickly slam the door shut then drag a chair in front of the door to prevent everything exploding out. Once everything’s away, do your lawn and weed check and give it a little loving. Maybe avoid too much weed killer—you don’t want your garden to look like a WMD’s been dropped on it.

Head inside and look at each room as though you’re looking at it for the first time. It might be a bit difficult if you’ve grown up in this house and have spent decades here, but try your best. Is it clean? Is it cluttered? Do the carpets/floorboards/blinds/curtains need a good clean? Remember when you were young and povvo and had to clean your gross student house when you vacated so you could get your bond money back and hit the pub? Think of it like that. You really, really want that beer money back. I mean, BOND money, you really want that bond money back.

Is your home light, bright and airy or does it look like that house rented by those Kiwi vampires in the hilarious Taika Waititi film, What We Do in the Shadows (related note: it’s a horrible house that has zero light and is filled with coffins)? Clean the walls with sugar soap and place all crayons, pencils, paints, textas—anything that your Mini Picasso can use on your freshly cleaned walls—in a safety deposit box in your nearest interstate capital city. Open the windows, let some fresh air in. When styling your home, use heaps of light, rich, natural colour palettes and textures. 

Another great tip from these guys: clean every little spot you wouldn’t expect people to look…because people WILL look. Like that episode of The Block the other night where Shaynna was judging a room, sat down on an armchair, tilted her head and noticed an unpainted bit of skirting board which was left like that because the contestants thought they were being smart and figured no one would look in that spot. Oh how wrong they were. Not really sure why I used this as a comparison given those contestants then went on to win the room. 

Anyways, there’s plenty of other things you can do to make your home attractive on inspection days: brew some coffee, laden your home with freesias, bake a cake (to eat, not for any other reason), light an oil burner, play some soft music like Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. Like an old flame from the past, rekindle your love for your home, just don’t fall madly in love again: there’ll always be another flame/home to love.

Want to read more?

Head to Your Property Investment for more hints and get some expert styling tips from Köntrast’s, Donna D’Paul. Read Mark Earle’s lowdown on the impact of spring on the Melbourne property market.