Making sure your property is spick and span for Show Day is important, but there’s a big difference between fluffing the cushions and conducting a deep clean.
Sprucing up for your Show Day
When you’re selling your home, you want your property to look at its best, especially when you host a Show Day. But it’s not enough to simply fluff the cushions and run a mop across the floor - ensuring good hygiene guidelines have been adhered to is important, especially in our current climate, where global concern around virus transmission is at a peak.
Deep cleaning your home
To ensure your home is hygienically clean for a Show Day, we suggest:
- Help your helper: If you’re lucky enough to have domestic help, task them with preparing your home for a deep clean. Moreover, it’s time to take things a little more seriously: now’s the time to make sure they are covered for sick leave, and provide assurances that they will be paid, whether they need to take sick leave, or your family needs to go into lockdown for a while.
- Book the best: When it comes to selling your home, there’s no such thing as “too clean”, and there’s no such thing as “too qualified” when it comes to your deep cleaning service provider. Make sure you hire a reputable, certified, and professional service provider.
- Protect everyone’s health: If you, or any member of your family, or your estate agent, is unwell, in the lead up to your Show Day, we recommend you reschedule your Show Day. This may seem an inconvenient setback, but the health and wellbeing of your family, your estate agent, and potential buyers, is far more important.
- Change your greeting: Welcoming people into your home is often done with a handshake and a smile. Rather, considering our current climate and viral outbreak, it’s preferred you find an alternative way of conducting personal greetings. Don’t worry about the societal expectations - we’re all in this together!
- Good hygiene rules: Washing your hands after eating, touching your face, stroking your pets, or preparing meals, remain important personal hygiene rules, as always.
- Stock every room: A bottle of hand sanitiser and fully stocked soap dispensers in every bathroom, will help to ensure that your potential buyers, your family, and your estate agent, have everything they need to stay on the healthy side of life.
- Shoes off: Ask people to remove their shoes before they walk into your home. This may seem a strange request, but it can help to maintain the hygienic state of your home. Many people make this a standard rule at home, often swapping out their “out of the house” shoes for comfortable slippers, or similar, when they come home. Asking people to remove their shoes before they take a walk through your home for sale is often recommended, to ensure your home stays squeaky clean on Show Day.
- Follow this nifty guideline for your Show Day spring clean.
- Hire a professional service provider: Deep cleaning of your home is an essential, as this not only provides a hygienic environment, it also makes your home sparkle. That sparkle of a truly clean home will be a deciding factor for interested buyers. You should never discount the attraction of squeaky clean surfaces.
Advice for estate agents
While the global COVID-19 outbreak is front of mind for many of us, many of the personal hygiene guidelines are simple common sense. For estate agents, in particular, who meet and greet several different people every day, maintaining good personal hygiene is important. As Private Property, we value our estate agent community, they are the first interpersonal touchstone for an interested buyer, and an interested property seller. Building relationships, and maintaining good communication with your clients often necessitates conducting personal meetings, overseeing property inspections, and guiding interested buyers through their potential new homes. While the common handshake and similar greetings are often viewed as a sign of courtesy, it is absolutely socially acceptable to avoid these conventions when required, especially if you or your client appear to be ill. Check out these ideas for greeting people differently. Moreover, it’s always important to ensure you wash your hands correctly and take care to avoid passing any illness you may have. We have adapted the National Institute for Communicable Diseases recommendations for your unique working environment. These recommendations include:
- Avoiding close contact with people who appear to be battling acute respiratory infections, are coughing, or are sneezing.
- If you are ill, you can prevent passing on your illness to others, by immediately consulting your doctor telephonically, and asking for medical advice.
- Following your doctor’s medical advice, and this may mean staying home and adhering to a treatment plan until you are better.
- Rather, reschedule your appointments and meetings, if you or your client appear to be ill. This is especially important during a viral outbreak or pandemic.
- Check with your clients if they have been travelling overseas, or have visited any region in the world where a viral outbreak has recently taken place, or is currently underway.
- If you’ve been travelling to, or have recently visited, an area on the planet that is currently experiencing a viral outbreak, it’s recommended you stay home until you are absolutely certain you have not picked up a virus while on your travels.
- It’s entirely socially acceptable to skip the handshake, especially during a viral outbreak.
