Kitchens, Bathrooms and yard are the main areas that house buyers are concerned with. The kitchen and bathroom involve lots of disruption to replace and buyers will just go elsewhere, unless your home has lots going for it.

Think hard about spending $20,000 on replacing these two rooms, it will almost certainly be worth it in term sof a higher selling price. This amount will replace old and worn out cupboards and fittings and cover the cost of new tiles.

The yard affects the likelihood of reaching a higher price because it is the first thing that visitors see. There are different levels of yard expenditure and you need to decide which route to follow:

1.You can tidy it, remove junk and cut the grass

2.You can rip up the old lawn, weedy borders and all and put new turf down.

3.You can lay ornamental chippings over part or all of the front and rear yards. This will cut down the area that needs tidying or replanting, and looks good. Make sure you lay heavy grade poythene underneath it though, or the weeds will come through, before you sell the house.

4.Buy large shrubs and a few small trees for the borders and corners of both front and rear yard.

5.Pay a landscape designer to plan it. You can then ask the landscaper to give you a planting list, or to do the work. This is the highest cost option, but has by far the biggest impact.

Once you have the big jobs under way, you can start thinking about the small ones. Paint any room that is need of freshening up. Use pale and neutral colors, that no-one can object to. Paint over any red, black or other strong colors that teenagers like in their rooms.

Paint the outside of the house.

Obtain some packing cases. Place one in each room in the house. Remove all clutter and put it into the boxes. Clutter makes your house look smaller. You will have to pack it all away eventually, you are just getting ahead of yourself. Rent storage space in a Self-Store facility and put your packing cases in there until you have sold the house.

Clean everywhere, windows, tops of wardrobes and cupboards. Shampoo all your carpets.

So now your house has a new kitchen, new bathroom, new yard, and it is all painted inside and out. You have more room because all the clutter has gone. Do you still want to sell it?

When you arrange viewings, make the children go out. This makes the house seem less cluttered again, and gives you a chance to tidy their rooms again. Turn all the lights on, put music on low, to help drown any neighbourhood noise and make sure the televisions and computers are all switched off.