OK, it’s time to sell.

You know you need to get your house sale ready, you might even be motivated to do it!

You take a walk through your house,  if you’re very motivated you may be holding a clipboard. Then a strange thing happens – your house looks OK. “not much to do here” you think, “just a bit of tidying and maybe mending a few things”

STOP!

The reason you don’t think you need to do much is because it’s your house, you live there and are blind to how it looks – you see it every day. It’s difficult to be objective when it’s your house, you chose the furniture and colours, these are your things.

However, you need to be able to see your house as buyers will see it in order to make the changes that are required. You need to distance yourself.

In the Complete Idiot’s guide to staging your home to sell, Julie Dana and Marcia Layton Turner provide a great way to objectively assess how your home stacks up against the competition and what needs changing.

1. Grab your digital camera and take some pictures from the kerb to see what buyers driving by would see. Then take one from the driveway, moving closer, then one of the front yard. Keep taking pictures as you go inside the house. Then take 4-5 pictures in each room, one from the door and the rest inside. Take shots inside wardrobes, the pantry and don’t forget the garage and store room.

2. Print the pictures then wait a few days

3. Go to a local coffee shop or library, anywhere but home. Flick through a property magazine to get you in the mindset then look at your pictures. Make notes of overall and specific improvements. You now should have a much longer list of actions.

The one thing of course that your photos won’t tell you is how your house smells. For this you will need a friend who doesn’t come to your house much. Invite them over and ask them to honestly tell you what your house smells like – smoking, pets, last night’s cooking, nappies, strong smelling fragrance – and help you find and eliminate the source of the problem.

The more you can distance yourself, and put yourself in the shoes of your buyers the better you will be able to get your house sale ready. And selling your house is the whole objective.