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 Getting the Best Price for Your Home Includes Landscaping for Curb Appeal
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Michael_McGroarty]Michael McGroarty

If you own a home, then sooner or later you are going to be ready to sell that home. Maybe you've already sold a home or two. People tend to move more often than our parents did.

There are a lot of things that go into getting the best possible price for your home, but the very first thing your home needs is curb appeal. When a prospective buyer, or a realtor for that matter, pulls up in front of your home, they immediately form an opinion about your house. Fair or not, that's what people do. You can have the most beautiful home in the city, but if prospective buyers don't get a super positive feeling about your house the minute they lay eyes on it, they are going to enter and view the rest of your house with a negative impression.

Fixing that problem is easy enough to do.

When people pull up in front of your house there are two things they see. A house, and the landscaping in front of that house. If the landscaping is unattractive, the house will appear to be unattractive. Landscaping for curb appeal does not cost a lot of money, it's simply a matter of making sure the landscaping is neat, with well defined edges, and colorful. But when landscaping for curb appeal, the most important thing you need to do is to raise the beds with topsoil. Of course you have to do this before you plant.

Plants do much better in raised beds, and the plants in the beds really stand out. In order to raise the beds around your house you do not have to buy expensive stones and build retaining walls. Just establish the outline of the planting beds, cut an edge into the soil with a spade, and fill the planting beds with approximately ten inches of good rich topsoil. You'd be amazed at how much you can raise a planting bed without any type of retention.

Here are two more things you don't need:

Plastic edging. It's expensive, a lot of work to install, and it never stays in place. You can cut an edge with a spade and your landscape will actually look better. Then you can make the bed a little larger any time you need to.

The other thing you definitely do not need is weed control fabric. The stuff just doesn't work. The weeds grow right on top of the fabric, then root through the fabric making it even harder to keep your beds weed free. You'll find a really good article on weed control on my website.

When landscaping for curb appeal, plant placement and selection is very important. In a corner bed you need a centerpiece. I like Canadian Hemlock because they are evergreen and provide an excellent background for more colorful plants. In front of the Hemlock you can use a bright colored evergreen like Gold Thread Cypress, but don't use too many. Usually three is all you want. Around the backside of the same bed you can use a darker evergreen like Taxus or even a flowering shrub that you keep trimmed down low like Weigela. Lots of colors are fine, but don't stagger the colored plants in your landscape, use them in groupings, and be careful not to use too many in any one grouping. When you use more than three of any colored plant they lose their effectiveness. You are adding them for contrast, and when used sparingly they look much better.

There are lots of landscaping photos on my website that will give you a lot of good ideas.

In front of a house I like to use an arc of medium height plants like Blue Girl Holly, then put a couple of taller plants behind the arc. When landscaping for curb appeal you want the landscape to stair step toward the house. In other words, the lawn is the bottom step, the raised bed is step two, low growing plants step three and so on.

If you are re-landscaping an older home you probably should start with a sledge hammer before you do anything else and bust out the sidewalk to the front door. Builders put in the ugliest sidewalks in the world, and they usually are hard to maneuver as you walk toward the front door. Once you have the old sidewalk removed, let your imagination run wild. Remember, you are landscaping for curb appeal, and there is no better way to establish ultimate curb appeal than with a beautiful curved walk that gently winds its way to the front door. Once again, there are photos of such sidewalks on my website, and you'll see what wonderful landscaping opportunities they present.

The last step in landscaping for curb appeal is to create an interesting shaped raised bed in the front yard. Fill this bed with spring flowering bulbs, and annual flowers for the summer. If your house is going to be on the market in the fall, add some chrysanthemums for a burst of fall color.

So what's the best benefit of landscaping for curb appeal? You'll gain great experience so you can make sure your new home is landscaped just the way you want it!

You are welcome to use this article on your website or in your newsletter as long as you reprint it as is, including the contact information at the end. Website URLs must be active links. You are welcome to use this article with an affiliate link, http://www.freeplants.com/resellers.htm

Mike McGroarty, the author of this article, would like to give you this Ebook: "The Gardener's Secret Handbook". Stop by his http://www.freeplants.com website and get your copy right now. It's his way of saying hello! Article provided by http://gardening-articles.com

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Landscaping Can Make or Break Curb Appeal for Homebuyers
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Mark_Nash]Mark Nash

Homebuyers love an inviting home even before they see the interior. Home sellers can take some easy steps to turn a drive by or Internet photo of their home into a showing appointment. Mark Nash author of 1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home offers easy tips for your readers and viewers to prepare their home for spring market.

-Purchase a seasonal wreath for your front door.

-Place a pair of planters that match the style of your home on the front porch. Fill with blooming flowers or loosen frozen soil with hot water and fill with evergreen boughs and red or yellow dogwood available at your florist or garden center. If you have window boxes duplicate flowers or evergreen look.

-Don’t put silk flowers or plants into any exterior landscape.

-Give buyers a glimpse of your summer gardens when selling a home in the winter. Display a collage of photos of your landscaping in spring, summer and fall.

-Clean up any tree branches, leaves, trash and pet droppings in front and rear yards.

-Position spotlights from home center stores at the base of ornamental trees to up light branches for a dramatic effect.

-Spread decorative bar mulch over flowerbeds and around tree bases for a manicured and professional look.

-Take down any leftover holiday decorations. Resist using clear Italian lights to accent trees or shrubs. Kitsch is out.

-Clear away snow and ice from sidewalks and driveways immediately, to illustrate pride of ownership.

-A fresh application of driveway sealer on asphalt can give it an update.

-Edge sidewalks and driveways, irrigate and mow lawns and prune shrubs and trees. Well-maintained homes attract buyers.

-Spread new decorative gravel to freshen up driveways. Bare spots and irregular levels can distract buyers from the overall look upon arrival.

-House numbers should be easily visible from the street. Make sure they’re lit at night.

-Limit yard ornaments to a favored few. Excess ornaments can make yards look busy and buyers might want them included in a purchase contract.

-Make sure your barbecue grill is clean and operational, especially if you plan to leave it.

-Clear gutters of debris and make sure there are no weeds growing in them. Look for clogged and dented downspouts. Place splash pads or gutter extensions to move rainwater away from the foundation, a typical home inspector complaint.

-All soil should be graded down hill away from foundations. Do it before an inspector red flags it.

-Trim trees and shrubs back around air-conditioning condensing units. Remove covers for home inspection testing.

-Take a good look from the street or road at the front of your home. Look for shrubs that are over grown or dead and remove and replace with shrubs that are to scale to your home. Small inexpensive bushes send the wrong message.

-Add annual flowers in home foundation beds. Select one or two colors to create visual uniformity. White and purple are a good choice to add color punch to a landscape.

-Paint and refresh yard lights, flagpoles, mailboxes, window boxes, fences and trellis. Don’t forget the swing set or play equipment.

-Have pool bottom painted and any deferred pool maintenance performed. Keep water crystal clear and inviting. Keep pool temperature on the warm side when buyers stoop to test the water.

-Lay sod or bare spot grass seed in lawn areas that need attention, near play equipment, dog runs and non-paved pathways. Unkempt lawns are the number one landscape turn-offs for buyers.

-Replace broken bricks on terraces, cracked concrete patios and steps. Eliminate trips and falls on property showings.

-Restore screens on porches and lanai’s. Dirty, rusty and ripped screens limit functionality to homebuyers.

-Have irrigation systems flushed and checked. Don’t overlook outside water spigots.

-Verify that drains in exterior basement stairwells and garages drain properly and are free of debris.

-Hire a landscape designer to make plan to perk up a tired landscape. Professionals can provide a fresh perspective that can appeal to buyers.

-Plant low maintenance plants and shrubs that are appropriate to your area.

-Educated plant lovers are on the rise and they know which plants are winter hardy. High maintenance plants such as roses can overwhelm first-time buyers.

Mark Nash's fourth real estate book, "1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home" (2005), and working as a real estate broker in Chicago are the foundation for his consumer-centric real estate perspective which has been featured on ABC-TV, CBS The Early Show, Bloomberg TV, CNN-TV, Chicago Sun Times & Tribune, Fidelity Investor’s Weekly, Dow Jones Market Watch, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Realty Times, Universal Press Syndicate and USA Today.

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