← All Articles Sellers · 7 min read

How to Prepare Your Home for Sale in Brisbane

The work you do in the weeks before you list does more for your sale price than almost any other decision you make in the campaign. Here's a practical guide.

Most vendors spend a great deal of time thinking about when to sell and which agent to choose, and relatively little time thinking about what to do in the weeks between that decision and the day the property goes live. That window is where a meaningful portion of your sale result is determined. Buyers form impressions quickly, often within the first few seconds of an open home, and those impressions drive both the depth of interest and the offers they are willing to make.

This is not a guide to full renovation; that question is addressed separately. This is about the targeted, practical work of getting a property in the best possible condition for the market it is entering and the buyers who will inspect it.

Start with decluttering and depersonalising

The single most important preparation task is also the least expensive: remove everything that is not serving a purpose in the presentation. Buyers need to be able to imagine themselves living in the property. A house full of personal photographs, children's artwork on the fridge, sporting memorabilia, and accumulated furniture makes that difficult. The goal is not to make the property feel empty; it is to make it feel spacious, neutral, and inviting rather than someone else's home.

In practice, this means editing every room. Remove at least one-third of the furniture from rooms that feel crowded, clear kitchen benchtops of everything except one or two intentional items, empty built-in wardrobes to roughly half capacity (buyers always open wardrobe doors), and box up personal photographs and decorative items that are specific to your household's tastes. Storage items that can't be removed go into a pod or storage unit for the duration of the campaign.

For units and townhouses, this process is even more critical. Smaller spaces magnify clutter. A unit that looks lived-in and crowded in photographs is one that buyers scroll past. The same unit with well-chosen furniture and clear floor space looks generous in proportion and photographs significantly better.

Address the minor repairs that buyers notice

There is a category of defects that are cheap to fix but that buyers use to form a judgement about how well the property has been maintained. Filling and touching up wall scuffs, replacing cracked light switch plates, fixing sticking doors or cupboard hinges, resealing around the shower, re-grouting discoloured tiles, replacing dead globes, and ensuring all taps run without dripping are the kinds of items that individually are trivial but collectively communicate neglect if they are left unaddressed.

A buyer walking through an open home and noticing five small maintenance failures will leave with the impression that the property has not been well looked after, even if every one of those items could be fixed for a few hundred dollars. The psychological cost of visible deferred maintenance is disproportionate to its actual cost to fix. Before your photographer arrives and before your first open home, walk through the property as if you were a buyer looking for reasons to offer less.

Items that require trades but are worth doing before listing include repainting rooms with scuffed, stained, or strongly coloured walls; fixing any drainage or guttering issues that would show up on a building report; and addressing any moisture or mould in wet areas. Items that are typically not worth doing are cosmetic upgrades to kitchens, bathrooms, or flooring that buyers in your suburb and price bracket will likely change to their own taste anyway.

Furniture: what you have and what to hire

The question of whether to use existing furniture or engage a property stylist depends on what you have and what the target market expects. In inner-east Brisbane at mid-to-upper price points, professional property styling has become the norm for the segment of the market that is competing for serious buyers. A property styled by a professional stands apart in online listings, which is where most buyers form their shortlist before they ever attend an open home.

If your existing furniture is in good condition, suits the property, and will photograph well, a selective approach works: keep the pieces that present well and supplement with hired items for the rooms that need it. A styled lounge and main bedroom are often enough. If the existing furniture is dated, mismatched, or too large for the rooms, a full styling package is worth the investment for the campaign period.

For investment properties being sold vacant, professional styling is strongly advisable. An empty room is hard to photograph well and harder for buyers to emotionally connect with. Styled rooms give buyers a sense of how the space functions and feels at a scale that empty rooms cannot replicate.

Professional photography is not optional

The photography is the first thing most buyers see, and for many it is the deciding factor in whether they add the property to their inspection shortlist. Photographs taken on a smartphone, or even by a competent amateur, do not compete with professional real estate photography. The difference in how a property reads online is immediately visible, and in a market where buyers are scrolling through dozens of listings, it matters.

Good real estate photography requires the right lighting, the right equipment, the right time of day (typically early morning or late afternoon for the exterior), and a photographer who understands how to make rooms look their best. It also requires the property to be thoroughly prepared before the photographer arrives. Every detail that will appear in the photographs should be finished before the shoot: styling complete, surfaces clear, gardens tidy, pool clean, cars moved from the driveway.

For higher-value properties, drone photography of the exterior and aerial view is worth adding. For properties with outdoor entertaining areas, indoor-outdoor flow is a major selling point and should be captured well. Ask your agent what the standard is in your suburb; if comparable listings in your price bracket are using floor plans, drone photography, and twilight shots, your listing should match that standard.

Kerb appeal and the first 30 seconds

Buyers who attend open homes make a judgement about the property before they walk through the front door. The driveway, the garden, the front fence, the path to the entrance, and the condition of the exterior are all processed in the first 30 seconds. A property that looks unloved from the kerb starts every inspection at a disadvantage that is hard to recover from inside, even when the interior is excellent.

In Brisbane's inner east, where many homes are Queenslanders, postwar timber homes, and double-brick lowsets, the exterior condition and garden presentation are visible markers of how the property has been cared for. Specifically: mow and edge the lawn, trim overhanging vegetation from pathways and gutters, paint or clean the front fence if it is in poor condition, wash down the exterior walls if there is algae or dirt, clean the driveway, and ensure any front garden beds are tidy and free of weeds.

For units and townhouses, kerb appeal means the common entry areas if you have any influence over them, the balcony if it is visible from the street, and the condition of the front door and entry mat. You cannot control common areas entirely, but you can ensure your own visible spaces are presented well.

What buyers notice first at open homes

Beyond the physical condition of the property, buyers at open homes are attuned to smells, natural light, and the sense of space. Homes that smell clean and fresh are more appealing than homes that smell of cooking, pets, or mustiness. Airing the property thoroughly in the days before opens, addressing any moisture or mould sources, and removing items that hold odours (pet bedding, bins near the entry, heavily upholstered furniture that has absorbed years of cooking smells) are low-cost but high-impact steps.

Natural light matters more than artificial lighting. Open every blind and curtain before an open home. Clean windows front and back. In rooms that are genuinely dark, consider whether repainting in a lighter colour is worth doing before the campaign, or whether a repositioned mirror can help. Buyers who walk into a dark room need to consciously override a negative impression; buyers who walk into a bright, light-filled room are already positively engaged.

Temperature is relevant in Brisbane's summer months. A property that is stifling hot during an open home is uncomfortable in a way that affects how buyers feel about the property even if they cannot fully articulate why. Air conditioning the property to a comfortable temperature before buyers arrive is a small consideration with a meaningful effect on how the inspection is experienced.

What to leave to your agent

The preparation decisions that require knowledge of comparable sales, buyer behaviour, and what the current market in your suburb is responding to should be informed by your agent. A good agent should walk through the property with you before you begin preparation and give you a clear view of what to spend money on and what to leave alone, based on what comparable properties in your suburb and price bracket are achieving and what the buyer pool for your property type is responding to.

If an agent is pushing you to spend on improvements without being able to show you what comparable prepared properties have achieved versus comparable unprepared ones, that is not guidance you can act on confidently. Ask for the data. The answer to "should I spend $8,000 on this?" should always be grounded in what the market has demonstrably paid for properties at your level of preparation versus properties at the next level up.