You Can Get A House Ready To Sell Without Spending Big

Buyers don’t only buy space, they buy the feeling that a home has been looked after. That’s why we’re obsessed with the unglamorous winter jobs that quietly change everything: the tiny DIY fixes, the fresh-clean cues, and the kerb appeal upgrades that make someone slow down on a drive-by and book an open home.

We kick off with a nod to How To Dad and that classic Kiwi DIY energy: you don’t have to be an expert, you just have to finish the little things you’ve been stepping over for months. We talk practical, high-ROI tasks for preparing your house for sale in New Zealand, from skirting and touch-ups to replacing a tired letterbox, refreshing interior window sills, and giving the front door some love. Then we get into cleaning that buyers notice instantly, especially bathrooms. Clean grout, less mould, and a brighter “fresh” look can shift how people judge the whole property within seconds.

We also share a surprisingly effective smell hack using baking soda (tested after a brutal coffee spill), plus why curtains matter more than most sellers think. Outside, we cover water blasting driveways and paths, moss and mould treatment for slippery areas, and why you should be careful on timber decks. Finally, we talk staging psychology, pet hair quick-fixes, and even the rise of neighbourhood kids offering to help with lawns and odd jobs when you’re short on time or energy.

If you want a realistic checklist for winter home maintenance and spring selling prep, hit play, then subscribe, share it with a mate who’s selling, and leave us a review. What’s the one job you’ll tackle first?

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:10

Oh my god, guys, you will not believe who I have in the office today. I have the guy from How To Dead. Hello, Megan.

Meeting How To Dad

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Trick Char. All right, we've been following How To Dead. We need to find out what his actual name is. We probably can Google it. No idea. But we decided not to fan fangirl him too much. But How to Dead. He is a bit of a legend in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

And overseas. I know a lot of people actually follow him from overseas. Let's talk about why we decided to talk about him.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Because we both love a man in jandles. But no. House of Dad is hilarious. He's a really famous New Zealand parent who talks about New Zealand life in jandles while he's raising his kids. And he's just done this whole series on fixing stuff around my house that I promised my wife I would fix for ages ago. And Zebranesa was just saying to me, like, what can people do during winter to prepare their houses for sale? And I straight away thought of how to dad.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

So how to dad? We're gonna link you up and we truly hope you're gonna listen to this episode and leave us a comment. And if you do all MG, we're gonna send you a new pair of gendals.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Not fancy ones though, the warehouse ones. The warehouse ones. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Cool. So number one, what can people do to prepare their house for spring, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

For spring. For spring. So so some basic things. It's I mean,

Small DIY Jobs That Matter

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I'd highly recommend you follow his page. He did this awesome little bit with adding some skirting boards around a pillar in his kitchen. So just finishing off those little jobs, he actually put these weights. So like he put the glue on and then he used his weights to press the skirting boards against his pillar. Well, I think he watched some sport or something, and then when it dried, then he finished off TV ingenuity. Yeah, totally. DIY culture. And he made the point like he's not the best person at DIY, but just have a go and try and finish off these little jobs. In another episode, he put up like a little retaining wall and finished off a bit of lawn. So it's just a good example of things that could get done. Like you could replace your letterbox if it's looking a bit tatty. It's funny, we deliver flies to a lot of letterboxes, and I always get excited when people have put up a new one and I notice and I'm like, oh, new letterbox. Awesome. I wonder if they're selling. Or you know, you could put up a fence, you could paint something, windowsills and inside windowsills is a really good one over winter because at least you're in the warm. Yeah. Um, touching up your front door, little little jobs that you might have been like looking at the grout in your bathroom, thinking, oh, I need to scrub that, or like just tidying up.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Hey, this episode is not sponsored by How to Dead or the Glass Door Company. I've just used the Glassdoor Company for the grout stuff. You can buy this product online and

Bathroom Grout Without The Grind

SPEAKER_00 2:59

OMG, it's amazing. Like it got rid of the mold and cleaned up the grout. Like the products they have are actually really, really cool. So um highly recommend.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Was it fast to use or did you still have to scrub?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

It was fast. Oh, good. Yeah, I didn't really have to do much scrubbing, I just left it overnight. Only says two, three hours. But I forgot. So yeah, I came back the next day, gave it a good wipe, and um, yeah, it was awesome. So highly recommend those products to prepare your house because it does refresh the bathroom.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah, it does, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

It does give it a bit of a new, clean, fresh look. The other thing I've discovered recently is I'm gonna test it out inside the house, but I've tested it in the car. I've spilled some coffee in the car.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Who has it recently?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

And oh my god,

Baking Soda For Bad Smells

SPEAKER_00 3:43

it was like a full cup, and oh, the smell was just awful. And I thought something died in the car, and then I remember it was probably me spilling the coffee and my oat milk. But what I did is I put a jar of baking powder, baking soda in the boot of the car, and it soaked up all the smell.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Within a day, it was gone.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I wonder if that would work for houses.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

So I've trapped one now inside my um shoe cabinet where the shoes are and the kids sports clothes, and you know, it gets a bit funny, funky, especially when you have boys. So uh I I'm gonna I'm gonna try it and I'm gonna let you know next time. But again, you know, simple things like that. You don't have to spend a fortune getting your house sorted.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yep, that's awesome tips. Um, another thing you could do is wash some curtains. I mean, that's one of the things the buyers do straight away is they turn your curtains around and look at the back of them just to see if there's any like mold or

Curtains That Pass Buyer Checks

SPEAKER_01 4:34

mildew or anything like that. Net curtains, especially, can just get really dusty and just look so much better after a wash, or take them off. Just saying.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Take them off, get a new one. And again, like the warehouse actually has really good quality curtains these days, you know, Spotlight constantly have sales bruscoes, surprise, surprise. Like, there's so many places now where we can actually get cheap things that's still good quality.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Yep, Timu Timu, she said. Um, yeah, that's the thing. Okay, so finishing off the odd jobs, getting the house clean and fresh.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Water blasting.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Water blasting, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

It's like so overrated. You can just water blast your driveway, your front path, and it looks so good. Just don't

Water Blasting And Moss Control

SPEAKER_01 5:20

water blast your deck. Why is that? Well, because people go way too close and they smash up their deck wood. It's not a good look. Yeah, so just be careful on your deck. Who's that? Moss and mold stuff. My sister just came over and stayed with my parents actually, and she did like a moss and mold treatment. I think she got it from I to 10, and you spray it on and then just give it a wee scrub afterwards, and she washed it off because my mum doesn't like the smell of chlorine. Okay, but yeah, it came up really good, and now my parents aren't slipping over so much. Okay, can she come around to my house? She lives in Sydney, so it might be tricky.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Okay, I also saw Hart of Dead yesterday. He randomly popped up on my feed doing his table. He sended the table back.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I saw that, yeah. He oiled it, I think, yeah on it. Yeah, and he had the dodgiest blanket underneath the table, and I was really worried for his patio.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yes, well, then he probably would have had to do like the patio cover up as well. But again, like those things, even though the buyers are not buying your furniture, but a lot of buyers when they walk into places, this is why we get the houses staged usually. Yeah. Because they walk in,

Clean Looks Register In Minds

SPEAKER_00 6:25

they see those things, those things do register in your brain, whether that was clean or fresh or dirty or moldy. So, you know, spend some time doing those things.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Even little things, like if you get some masking tape and roll it around your hand, and then just go over your furniture if you've got a pet. We've talked about pets in previous episodes, haven't we? But if you've got a cat or a dog with long hair, just roll the tape around your hands like sticky side out and swipe your hand over some surfaces where your pet's been hanging out. Oh, washing your cat door. It's so quick, but it looks amazing afterwards and photographs.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

That brings us to the next episode that we're gonna do about things you hide in the photos. Yes. We were gonna do a countdown.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Countdown from 10. Countdown from 10, 10 items that are mostly hidden from the photos. And you guys keep keep guessing as you're listening to this and see if you've got any ride. That'll be cool. But you're right, like simple things, you know, gardening, wedding outside, just trimming things down.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Fresh mulch in the front, because you're gonna photograph the front of your house. So put some

Kerb Appeal On A Tight Budget

SPEAKER_01 7:28

mulch down. If the budget doesn't allow your whole garden to be mulched, mulch the front.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

And you know, it's not just the photographs. Um a lot of people, before they even want to put an off on the house, they'll do a drive-by. True. They will drive by the house, they will walk by the house, they will have a look, what does the house actually look like before they commit to coming to an open home? So having the front absolutely beautiful does pay off in the long run. And we're not, you know, we're not talking, scrubbing everything down. Like just make it presentable.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, and and you don't have to spend a lot of money. And if you really want to double check your budget versus your effort, because sometimes people are selling due to health reasons and they don't have a lot of energy or a lot of money, run it past us. We'll always be honest.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah. The other thing I'm seeing on the rise at the moment is the rise of child labor, where there's a lot of kids, like including my own, that go around the neighborhood going,

Hiring Local Kids And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Hey, do you have any jobs for us to do? You know, we can do some jobs for you. And they don't need to get paid much. You know, they're happy to do for 15 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever it is. But they can use them. Like you're helping the neighborhood kids, you're, you know, teaching them new skills, probably. You're teaching them work ethics. So if someone knocks on your door and they want to offer you a couple of hours of work, use them up. You know, get them to do those things that you don't want to get around to.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Actually, we do that over summer because it's really, really busy over summer for us. And, you know, by the time we get to the weekend, we don't have time to mow our lawns. So we've got a college boy who does it, and he does a great job. So he's always super happy because he's fundraising for various things. And we're super happy that we don't have to do lawn mowing on a Saturday. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

There you go. Well, thank you so much, Megan. And how to that, we are truly hoping you're gonna reach out to us. Bye.