Building a home is said to be the number one cause of nervous breakdowns and the number two of divorce. Selling your home is somewhere in the top 10 causes of modern-day urban stress. Having recently sold my house for less than the real estate bloke told me I'd get and more than I had a right to expect, I have evolved several grass-roots marketing principles. While too late for me, they may be useful to you if the roof over your head is about to be sold, in order to keep you in a future manner to which you have no right to become accustomed. These are not rules, they are simply marketing ideas that could make the difference.
Most people buy a house emotionally.
Sure they walk around looking for rising damp and knocking on the odd wall to see whether it's hollow, but in house terms this is like kicking the tyres of a second hand car so the salesman won't think you are an idiot. A properly marketed house is capable of getting the heart pumping overtime and turning brain to mush before the potential buyer reaches the front door. Your house may need a good overall paint job, but if the gate and the fence are freshly painted and the front door has been done in a designer colour with a brass lion with a ring in its mouth for a knocker, you've already told the potential new owner that he or she is dealing with the sort of house that will make them look good. If the front garden is a bit of a mess, plant a few flowering shrubs which you can buy at the markets a week or so before the first inspection. If you have a pathway to the front door then buy or hire a dozen standard roses in bloom and bury them in the ground, tub and all, to suggest that they're the work of a caring owner with old fashioned home values.