What is worth doing, and what is not.

Almost always worth it

• Deep cleaning, inside and out. The highest return per dollar in the entire process, every time.
• Decluttering and depersonalizing. Buyers need to imagine themselves in the space. Free, and it makes rooms read larger.
• Paint, where it is tired. Neutral, current, and done properly.
• Landscaping and the front approach. The photo that gets clicked and the first ten seconds of every showing.
• Small repairs. Sticking doors, dripping taps, cracked switch plates. Individually trivial, collectively they read as deferred maintenance.
• Light and hardware. Bright bulbs at a consistent temperature, and replacing dated fixtures is cheap next to what dated reads like in photos.

Usually not worth it

• Full kitchen or bath remodels immediately before listing. Rarely returns the outlay, and your taste may not be the buyer's.
• Major structural or system upgrades undertaken purely to sell, unless a condition is actively blocking financing.
• High-end finishes above the neighborhood. The comparable sales set a ceiling regardless of what you spend.
• Pools, additions and conversions done as a pre-sale project.

The order matters

Repairs, then paint, then deep clean, then declutter and stage, then photograph, then list. Doing photography before the work is finished is the most common and most expensive sequencing mistake, because those photos are the listing for its entire life.

Alex walks the property with you before any of this starts and tells you which items on this page apply to your home and which do not.