When you’re selling your home, adding curb appeal is a must-do. If someone drives by your house and thinks “Erm, no thanks,” they’ll never make it past the driveway. Creating curb appeal in the summer is simple. The weather in Sacramento may be super hot, but it’s still largely on your side. You can keep the flower beds full of heat resistant blooms and the lawn cut short and neat.
But what about during winter?
When it’s not as easy to keep bright blooms alive and grass tends to brown, how can you make your home look appealing to people driving by? We have a few suggestions.
Let’s look at how to add curb appeal during winter and what to do if you aren’t interested in wooing people in via the traditional means for home sale.
1. String Lights on Trees and Awnings
You can do a lot with twinkle lights. When the holidays start to roll around (and well into January), you can inject your exterior with a lot of charm by twisting strings of lights around your outdoor awnings and trees. You may even want to jazz it up with bigger, hanging bulbs. Show people all the fun ways to illuminate your front porch or walkway. Hanging lanterns are another way to decorate empty arbors during the off season for gardening.
2. Use Berry Wreaths
So it’s not that time of year when you can pick blooms from your garden and create a bright wreath for the front door. Stick with a red berry wreath this season. It’s cheery, fun, and makes your home look more welcoming. Anything you can do to attract people toward the front door is a good strategy! Even fake flowers can be turned into a stunning wreath that draws people toward the entrance of your for sale property.
3. Put Up a Colorful Bird House
Have some trees in your front yard? Put them to work this winter! They may not be lush with leaves, showing off how well they create shade in the summer, but that doesn’t mean your front trees have to be drab. You can spruce them up (no pun intended) with fun new accessories — like bird houses. Match the color to your home, or paint a bird house with a complementary shade. Think a white bird house against your blue house or a red bird house against your home’s white paint. Sometimes trees look less than inviting during colder weather, and this is a unique way to make them look alive and useful again.
4. Give Flower Beds a Makeover
So, not all of your flowers made it from June to January. No surprises there. But if you’re trying to show your property to potential buyers, you can still do a lot to make landscaping look good. Put in some winter hearty varietals and give your landscaping some new mulch. The addition of stones, metal decorations, and other accessories will also bring some new life to garden spaces. You want to help potential buyers see what they could do with these areas of the yard all year round.
5. Check In on Your Mailbox
Is your mailbox chipping or crooked? It’s always one of the first things someone sees when they drive by, but when the front yard looks a little dim because the trees are empty and the grass is browning, a cheerful mailbox is an even bigger asset. And, it’s a relatively inexpensive improvement to make. If you do nothing else for your curb appeal, choose a new, modern mailbox. A broken one doesn’t bode well for how you’re treating the rest of your home.
Not in the mood to do any home improvements or add curb appeal for a winter sale? You don’t have to! In fact, you can skip MLS all together if a fast, no-hassle sale is your top priority. For owners who are facing foreclosure or want to get rid of a rental property, an all-cash sale is a good alternative.
Contact California Family Homebuyers today to learn more! We may be able to close with an all-cash offer in as few as seven days… and we don’t care what your front yard looks like.