These days, more and more couples are choosing to forgo having children, instead opting to focus on their lifestyle, career and pets. While 20 years ago, making your home seem child-friendly and comfortable to growing families was a sure-fire way to get a sale, in the modern-day western world, you’ve got to dress your home up in a different light in order to entice those buyers and guarantee a quick sale.
Giving Your Home Pet Appeal
One way of making your home look appealing to buyers, especially millennial first-time buyers, is to give your home ‘pet appeal’ and make it look like a happy pet home that their cats and dogs can run free and enjoy plenty of space to enjoy themselves. If you are a pet owner yourself, your home will likely already be a happy pet home, otherwise make sure to include the following details in your property.
In the Garden
Keep a clean, pet-friendly garden with plenty of things and places for them to explore, investigate and sniff. If you like a flowery garden, make sure all the flowers and flora you plant are animal-friendly and not going to cause illness or sickness if ingested during over-excited play. Make sure to include a nice shaded area that offers a place to put a bowl of water or an animal bed and include plenty of storage space to store pet toys and garden accessories!
In the Kitchen
The kitchen is the heart of the home, where all meals are lovingly prepared and, in some properties, acts as a social area as well. It only makes sense that where you eat, your pets will eat too and having an area laid out with their food and water bowls and normally the storage for their pet food, shows you consider your pets a beloved member of the family.
Pets can be tricky beasts too, always getting into things so make sure any cupboards or food storage is sufficiently locked with removable child locks or latches and that there are no hanging or trailing objects that would attract a curious cat or playful puppy.
In the Lounge
Whether you are a pet on the sofa kind of person or have the opinion that all pets firmly belong on their own furniture, the lounge is another area where you want to show potential buyers that pets are considered and accommodated. Dedicate a cosy area that you can have a pet bed and a space for their favourite toys, make sure it’s close to the sofa so your pet can easier get your attention when they are feeling lonely and want company. Our pets enjoy enrichment too so if their bed is facing the television, it gives them something to keep their mind stimulating while they relax beside you.
Pets have belongings too, with dog tags for pets, harnesses for walking, toys to play with and spare bits and pieces for the inevitable accident or broken toy. Make sure you’ve got a storage area for your pet’s items, a flip-top basket or chest or a chest of drawers where you store their extra tags and collars, potential medical tags or medication and all the other items that come with owning and caring for a pet.
In the Bathroom
Even though they would have us consider otherwise, the bathroom is definitely not a place for pets and is one of the areas in your home you want to make pet unfriendly. This includes more child locks or latches on cupboards with harmful chemicals such as cleaning products and hygienic products and ensuring there is a strong method for closing the door from the outside without it easily being knocked or bumped open. Got a pooch with a preference for drinking from the toilet? Get yourself some toilet seat latches, they might delay your next bathroom trip by a few seconds, but they will stop your dog dripping toilet water throughout your home.
Selling your home is stressful, especially as you still need to live there comfortably while also showing potential buyers the appeal and best bits of your property. Consider the market in your area and have a look at the family demographics, taking into account the average home buyer, what they will want to see in a future property and how you can add that feature to your home.