When it comes to selling houses for their clients, estate agents invariably have heaps of advice on how to make a home look its best. This counsel usually involves creating a sense of kerb appeal, decluttering and sprucing things up with a fresh coat of paint. Some suggest you spend at least six months to really get the exterior and interior of your home shipshape, with the larger agents even providing how-to guides as part of the marketing bumf they give to would-be vendors.
When the opportunity to trade up presented itself to Sinead Beggan, one half of estate agents McGuirk Beggan, however, she managed to whittle down the 26-week lead-in time recommended by some of her industry peers to just 14 days.
For Sinead, it really was a case of all hands on deck when it came to readying her home in Cypress Downs, Templeogue, Dublin 6W, for sale. Number 2 was already well-maintained thanks to the work done by her husband, a painter and decorator, on the property’s exterior last summer. She had also invested at the same time in new carpets for the bedrooms and a runner for the stairs.
But she hadn’t anticipated what a big deal decluttering would be. “It was very stressful. I did take out a lot of stuff that didn’t need to be there, from kids’ toys that they’d not played with since they were toddlers to appliances sitting on kitchen counters. The car boot is still full of stuff.”
She also made a point of empyting the wardrobes of all excesses. “It is not unusual for people walking around a home to open up wardrobes to see what kind of space they offer, when in-person viewings open up again,” she says.
While Sinead brought in her sister, interior designer Sharon Beggan, to help stage the C3 Ber-rated mock Tudor for the photography and video, with two kids, Blaise (8), Devon, (5), and two 14-year-old westie dogs, it’s impossible to keep it in showhouse condition. “It is not always pristine,” she says.
And while estate agents might advise the rest of us try to leave our emotions at the door when the time has come to sell up and move on, Sinead readily admits that this is easier said than done. “Everything we’ve experienced as a family has happened here. It will be really emotional,” she says.
The detached house, which extends to 135sq m (1,453sq ft) is seeking €1.1 million through agents McGuirk Beggan and comes to the market with planning to add two bedrooms to its first floor and a separate permission to build a detached, three-bedroom, two-storey house of just under 1,200sq ft (111sq m) in the side garden.
