Think about the amazing amount of junk you have accumulated during your years of living in the house. Buyers who come to see the home don’t want to see clutter. They will have a difficult time seeing past this and imagining themselves living here. Sort through everything you have to distinguish the old from the new. If you don’t use it and it hasn’t any monetary value, the best thing to do is to throw it out. Make sure your kitchen counter is clean and if necessary place essential items in a box in a closet. Try not to have any knickknacks around the house. You can think of it as preliminary packing because you will have to pack it all up anyway when you sell the home.

Buyers will look in closets and open cabinet doors. You should try to have the things inside arranged neatly. When buyers see that you are organized they will also have the feeling that they won’t have much cleaning to do after you move out and they take possession of the home. If you know that you have too much furniture in some rooms but you don’t have anywhere to store it, you can rent a storage unit. Then you have the furniture ready for another place when you do sell. You can also have a flea market and sell off some of your used furniture especially if you plan to move to a smaller property where you will have even less space.

If there are any window coverings that you want to keep, remove them before you show the house. When a buyer looks through the home, if there are window coverings, they will be included in the sale. So if you remove them first, the buyer will not insist on them being part of the sale agreement. This also includes such things as removable rugs on the floor or a fireplace.

The next step in making sure your house is ready to put on the market is to make any necessary repairs that may turn off potential buyers. This includes replacing any cracked or broken tiles, making sure any holes in the walls are repaired properly, there are no leaky faucets or cabinet doors that don’t close properly. Neutral colors work best because the dcor you choose may not be in the same taste as the buyer. You can repaint the walls a neutral color. Remember that what was in fashion when you moved into the home may not still be in fashion now, such as flowery wallpaper. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to remove any wallpaper and paint the walls.

The house must be sparkling clean before potential buyers come to call. Prepare a checklist of things you need to do and then check them off when they are completed. Wash the windows, dust all the furniture, wash the floors, make sure there are fresh towels in the bathroom and that the beds are made. You should not have any clothing lying around the bedrooms. Put everything in the drawers or hang it in the closet so that the rooms look neat and tidy.

Once you’ve carefully scrutinized, repaired and cleaned the interior of the home, then its time to tackle the exterior. Make sure that all the doors open and close properly and that the outside of the home is clean and tidy. If there is any peeling paint on the windowsills, scrape it off and repaint. Trim the brush or hedge around the lawn and make sure the lawn is mowed.

1. Use an agent, and a good one at that. Yes I know we have all seen and heard bad tales of duff agents disappearing to Bangkok with all the rent money, but believe me, these crooked agents are few and far between. Yes an agent will cost you money, but who works for nothing? You can expect to pay anywhere between 7.5% and 15% of the gross rental in agent’s fees, but good agents invariably earn that money. If you don’t use an agent how are you going to carry out a credit check? You can always ask the agent to see the references too, why not? And can you be confident in the tenancy agreement you use. An agent’s agreement will be tried and tested and usually bang up to date. And how long is it going to take you to let the house yourself? Good agents always have a register of potential tenants readily to hand, and even if they don’t have the perfect one for you, they will locate you a tenant quicker than you could do it yourself. If they let the property a month earlier than you could, and the rental was 1,000 per month, think how much of their fees they have already covered by doing so. An agent also acts as a buffer between the two parties and that is invaluable. If you have no agent and two weeks after the let commences and there is a burst pipe, the tenant will ring you up at work, or on holiday and demand that you come and fix it. You could be several hundred miles away; you could be on the other side of the earth. An agent will field those calls for you. Believe me, a good agent will pay for their fees quite comfortably over the course of a year. So ask around about who is good and who is not. Quiz the agent too until you are satisfied that they are the correct person for you.

2. If you can empty the house of furniture, then do so. Why? Well for a start any furniture containing foam should be of recent manufacture and contain the necessary safety marks. Secondly if the expensive TV you have included in the let goes on the blink two weeks later, you are obliged to replace it with a set of equal value. The same applies with all appliances. Many tenants have their own anyway, so let them use theirs, and when they go wrong, the tenant bears the cost of repair or replacement and not you. Good furniture has a habit of getting marked and broken too, so take your priceless possessions out of the house.

3. Check all safety aspects, especially for gas and electricity. Make sure everything is in prime working order and that you possess the necessary safety certificates where required. The last thing you would want is a tenant gassed to death in their beds within the first month of the let, or any time come to that! You would be responsible, and you could end up in prison, and who could argue with that? So never economise on safety issues, and check that everything is just as it should be.

4. When you get the house back don’t expect it to come back as it was when you let it. Why? Because if a tenant is in that house for two or three years there is bound to be some wear and tear. Just as if you were living there yourself. You must expect some wear and tear on carpets for example, so be realistic and budget for a redecorating job and probably replacement carpets too. Some people fancifully imagine that the tenant will do all that for them, at their expense. It does happen, about once in a blue moon, so be realistic and understand that you might need to spend a little money to return the property to how you would like it.

5. Budget for taxes. I cannot tell you whether there will be any tax payable on your collected rent because I don’t know where you live and what laws apply to you, but as a norm imagine the rental income may be taxable at 25%. Imagine you had a let at 1,000 a month and the let ran on for three years. That’s 36,000 gross rental, that could produce as much as a 9,000 tax bill at the end of it all. So don’t go off on world tours spending every last bean until you have checked out the tax position as it applies to you, in your territory in your time. It is normal for some tax to be paid on some part of that rental money, so be aware of it, and budget for it, and you won’t have a nasty surprise waiting for you at the end of it all.