What to know before you price, prepare, market or accept an offer on your home.
Brendan Leahy · Selling in the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002
Truth. Strategy. Sold.
Bedfordale · Roleystone · Kelmscott · Mount Nasura · Mount Richon · Seville Grove
Before you start
kitchen.
Naked Real Estate®
What is in this guide
Prepare without overspending
Not everything you spend before selling comes back.
The question is not “what can I do to my house?” It is “what will the buyers for my home actually pay for?”
Here is where the money usually goes furthest.
Gardens
Street appeal sets what buyers expect before they reach the front door. That matters even more up here, where homes in Bedfordale and Roleystone often sit on bigger blocks with established gardens. If buyers pull up and see long grass and overgrown beds, they assume the inside is the same, and they start looking for more problems once they are in.
A Sunday afternoon and a trailer of mulch, for around $80, fixes most of it. Weed, mow, trim the hedges and freshen the beds.
“It's amazing how many buyers decide if they like your home by their first impression as they arrive.”
Repairs and maintenance
Small faults give buyers something to negotiate with. Leaking taps, broken exhaust fans, sticking door locks, broken sprinkler heads, cracked cornices, dead light switches. None of them cost much to fix. All of them get mentioned when an offer comes in.
Most buyers want to move straight in without a list of jobs. Do a walk-through and fix the niggles before the first home open.
“In any market, things like cracked cornices, leaky taps and broken light switches can make or break a sale.”
Paint
A fresh coat of paint is one of the cheapest ways to make a home look cared for, and to help buyers picture themselves in it. Go light and neutral, and use one colour throughout. It makes rooms look bigger and the whole home feel more consistent.
Avoid dark colours, strong or bright colours, off-whites with a yellow tinge, and a different colour in every room.
Your local paint shop or Bunnings can show you their most popular neutrals. On finish, most painters use low sheen on walls because it cleans well, and flat on ceilings. Ask yours.
“Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, you can't beat a fresh coat of paint.”
De-clutter
At a home open, buyers look at storage: robes, linen cupboard, pantry, garage. If cupboards are overflowing, buyers assume there is not enough space.
Pack away anything you do not use weekly or monthly: spare linen, towels, toiletries, books, boxes, paperwork, clothes. Put it in the garage or shed, out of sight. You do not need to pack up your life. Just the things you are not using.
De-personalise
Buyers need to picture their own family in the home. That is easier with a blank canvas. Pack away family photos, trophies, certificates and children’s names on bedroom doors.
It can be hard. It is your home. But making it feel a little less like yours is what lets another family fall in love with it.
Price and position
Pricing a home is not about finding the biggest number an agent will say out loud.
Online estimates and suburb medians are a starting point. They cannot walk through your home. They do not know whether your block is usable, whether the view is worth paying for, whether the layout works, or whether homes like yours are scarce right now.
In Mount Nasura, an automated valuation put one home at $600,000 to $650,000. Another agent thought $700,000 was the ceiling. It sold for $835,000, with six offers, because the right buyer valued something the data could not see.
Where should we position this home to get the strongest competition, without underselling it or scaring buyers off?
That is a strategy question, not just a valuation.
Be wary of the agent who gives you the highest number. A price set too high does not get you more money. It gets you fewer buyers, a longer time on the market, and a price reduction later.
Market to the right buyers
Sellers do not get paid in likes. They get paid at settlement.
Good marketing has one job: get the right buyers to inspect, compete and make an offer.
Photos and floor plans
Professional photography is not optional. Floor plans matter nearly as much. Buyers use them to decide whether to inspect, and afterwards to remember where the storage was and how the kitchen sat while they decide whether to make an offer. Serious buyers walk through a lot of homes. The floor plan is what keeps yours in their head.
Video
Video shows the feel and flow of a home, and the views, in a way photos cannot. Keep it to one or two minutes, and caption it. Plenty of buyers watch with the sound off.
Buyers who are already looking
53 per cent of our homes sell to a buyer who first viewed one of our other properties.
That is the value of an agent already talking to the buyers looking in your area. A buyer who dismissed your home online can often be persuaded to walk through, and more often than people expect, it turns out to be the one. Buyers rarely know if they love a home until they stand in it.
Marketing creates attention. Follow-up creates competition. Negotiation creates the result.
Choose the right selling method
There are three main ways to sell here, and the method should suit the home.
Private treaty. Listed with a price or range, and you negotiate with buyers as offers arrive. Simple and familiar. The risk is that it becomes a one-on-one negotiation with whoever moved first.
Auction. Rare in Perth. It can work well in a hot market with buyers ready to bid unconditionally, but it shuts out buyers who need finance or need to sell first.
Select Date Sale®. I introduced it in 2015, and more than 730 sellers have sold this way since. The home goes to market with a from-price or range. Buyers inspect and register their interest. When an offer arrives that you are prepared to consider, every registered buyer is told there is an offer on the table and invited to put forward their best and final.
They are not told what anyone else has offered, or your reserve. There is one round. We do not counter-offer.
It is not magic. If there is only one buyer, no process creates competition that is not there. And it is not right for every home.
One Mount Richon home had sat unsold for five months, advertised at $389,000. It had significant structural cracking that the earlier marketing had not dealt with. We made the cracking part of the marketing, went back to market from $399,000, higher not lower, and it sold in about a week for $411,000.
Sometimes the problem is not price. Sometimes it is strategy.
When the offers arrive
The highest offer is not always the best one.
When the first offer comes in, it can feel like the job is nearly done. Often it is just starting.
Price is one number. The offer also tells you whether the buyer needs finance, whether they need to sell their own home first, whether there is an inspection condition, and when they want to settle. Each is a way the sale can fall over.
Which offer is most likely to settle, at that price, on a date that works for me?
Two offers
In early 2019, I had a Roleystone home on the market from $720,000. The figures here have been changed for privacy, but the proportions are exactly as they were.
Two offers came in. One was $747,000, subject to finance, with the buyer holding bank pre-approval. Clean and straightforward. The other was $855,000, subject to the sale of the buyer’s own home.
I went and looked at the buyer’s home. It was not ready for market, and even finished, I did not believe it would sell for anywhere near what they had been told.
My advice was to take the $747,000. The sellers chose the $855,000. Ninety days later the buyer’s home still had not sold, and the contract ended. By then the first buyer had bought elsewhere. We sold for $711,000, which was $36,000 less than the clean offer they had at the start.
This is how I explain it to sellers. Imagine walking into a casino with $747,000 in your pocket, and being offered a bet: put it all on the table for the chance to walk out with $855,000. That is what a weak subject to sale offer is. You are not choosing between two prices. You are choosing between money you have and a bet on money you might get.
My job is to advise. The decision is always yours.
Subject to sale
Across our sales, roughly three in four of the buyers we work with are also sellers. So subject to sale offers are normal, and they are not automatically bad.
The protection is what most people call the 48-hour clause. It lets you keep marketing and consider another offer. If you want to proceed with the other offer, the first buyer is given notice and generally has two business days, not a literal 48 hours, to satisfy or waive their subject to sale condition. If they cannot, you can usually end that contract and proceed. The exact wording matters, so read the clause in your contract.
The clause lets you take another offer. It does not keep the other buyer waiting.
When there is only one offer
You cannot make one buyer compete with someone who does not exist. What you can do is negotiate more than the price: a shorter finance period, a settlement date that suits you, a firm end date on a subject to sale condition, or a buyer agreeing to list their own home straight away. Those are all worth real money.
Timing
Should you wait for spring?
The “wait for spring” rule mostly comes from the east coast, where auctions are common and cold weather keeps buyers away. Auctions are rare in Perth, and in my experience January and May have been my two busiest months for written offers.
Season changes how a home presents. A green paddock or a running creek helps some Hills homes. Others show better in warm weather.
How many homes like mine are for sale in my suburb right now, and who is looking for one?
Waiting can make sense if repairs are nearly done, a tenant is about to leave, or a competing home is about to sell. Waiting because someone once said spring is best is not a strategy. And the right time has to work for your life, not just the market.
Choosing an agent
Do not choose an agent because they gave you the highest number.
Ask them:
Who do you think will buy my home? If they cannot describe the buyer, they cannot market to them.
What would you tell me not to spend money on? A good agent will tell you what to leave alone.
What happens when the first offer arrives? This is where the money is made or lost.
What would make you tell me not to sell right now? If the answer is “nothing”, think about whose interests are driving the advice.
There are five more questions, about the conflicts most agents never mention, in The Five Questions Every Seller Should Ask Before Signing With Any Agent.
Further Reading
Every one of these is on our website, and every link in this guide is clickable.
Preparing your home
What Is My Bedfordale Property Worth?
Why I told a seller not to spend $60,000 before selling, and what the buyers were really paying for.
nakedrealestate.com.au/what-is-my-bedfordale-property-worth/
What Is My Mount Richon Property Worth?
One home sold twice, before and after its problems were fixed, and what the renovation did and did not add.
nakedrealestate.com.au/what-is-my-mount-richon-property-worth/
Pricing
What Is My Mount Nasura Property Worth?
The 320 square metre home that did not fit the data, and sold $135,000 above another agent’s ceiling.
nakedrealestate.com.au/what-is-my-mount-nasura-property-worth/
Marketing and selling method
Is Your Agent Marketing Your Home, or Marketing Themselves?
Why views and followers are not the result.
nakedrealestate.com.au/sell/is-your-agent-marketing-your-home-or-themselves/
Auction vs Private Treaty vs Select Date Sale®
An honest comparison, including where our own method is the wrong choice.
nakedrealestate.com.au/sell/auction-vs-private-treaty-vs-select-date-sale/
Offers, timing and choosing an agent
Should I Buy a House Before Selling Mine?
How subject to sale works in WA, and the clause almost nobody explains.
nakedrealestate.com.au/should-i-buy-a-house-before-selling-mine-wa-subject-to-sale-guide/
When Is the Best Time to Sell in the Perth Hills?
Why the spring rule is mostly an east coast auction rule.
nakedrealestate.com.au/sell/best-time-to-sell-perth-hills/
Best Service Guarantee
What we commit to when you list with us.
nakedrealestate.com.au/best-service-guarantee/
More articles: nakedrealestate.com.au/blog-and-resources/blog
Your pre-sale checklist
Click here to download the checklist. Or view this checklist on its own page by clicking here
Gardens
| Mulch garden beds | |
| Mow lawns | |
| Trim hedges | |
| Weed and edge |
Repairs and maintenance
| Leaking taps | |
| Broken exhaust fans | |
| Broken light switches | |
| Door locks | |
| Broken cupboards | |
| Cracked cornices | |
| Broken sprinkler heads |
Paint
| Walls: one light neutral colour, low sheen | |
| Ceilings: white, flat | |
| Touch up scuffs on doors and skirtings |
De-clutter
| Robes and linen cupboard | |
| Kitchen cupboards, drawers and pantry | |
| Bathroom vanity and cupboards | |
| Pack away excess linen, towels, toiletries, books, boxes, paperwork and clothes |
De-personalise
| Family photos | |
| Trophies, certificates and awards | |
| Children's names on bedroom doors |
Before you list
| Get an appraisal from someone who has walked through your home, not just an online estimate | |
| Decide what you will not spend money on | |
| Ask your agent what happens when the first offer arrives | |
| Ask your agent who they think will buy your home | |
| Ask your agent what would make them tell you not to sell right now |
Straight advice before you decide
You do not have to be ready to list to talk to me.
Sometimes the right advice is to sell now. Sometimes it is to wait. Sometimes I will tell you to do some work first, and sometimes I will tell you not to spend the money.
And sometimes the price I give you will be lower than the number another agent has put in front of you.
I would rather lose a listing by telling you what I actually think than win one with a number I do not believe.
No inflated appraisal figure to win the listing. No obligation to sell.
Brendan Leahy
Book a free property appraisal or call (08) 6254 6333
Truth. Strategy. Sold.
Truth. Strategy. Sold.
Truth. Strategy. Sold.
Perth Hills and Foothills specialists
Bedfordale · Roleystone · Kelmscott · Mount Nasura · Mount Richon · Seville Grove
RateMyAgent Suburb Winner for Bedfordale nine times, most recently 2026, and for Mount Nasura in 2022 and 2023.
Brendan Leahy has been selling homes throughout the Perth Hills and Foothills since 2002, with more than 1,500 personal sales.
Also servicing Canning Vale, Southern River, Gosnells and surrounds.
Read our Best Service Guarantee
Phone (08) 6254 6333
Office Unit 1/198 Brookton Highway, Kelmscott WA 6111
Web nakedrealestate.com.au
Truth. Strategy. Sold.
This guide is general information, not legal or financial advice. Every property and every contract is different.