Booking a house washing before sale is one of the few things you can do to a property in a week that shows up in every photo, every walk past and every open for inspection. It is also the job most sellers leave until three days out, by which point the good crews are booked and the weather has an opinion. This is the order we do it in, and why the order matters as much as the list.
The context is simple. Your buyer sees the house online first, on a phone, next to nine other listings in the same suburb. Whatever is grey, streaked or green in those photos is what they carry into the inspection.
Why house washing before sale is worth the trouble
Agents talk about presentation and mean the inside: styling, a coat of paint, decluttering. The outside gets a mow and a hedge trim. Meanwhile the render has black streaks under the eaves, the driveway has a dark tyre track worn into it, and the windows have not been done since the last tenant moved out.
None of that reads as dirt to a buyer. It reads as a house that has not been looked after, which quietly becomes a question about the roof, the gutters and the stumps. A clean exterior does not add anything to the house. It stops the house arguing against itself.
The order of work
Work top down and dirty to clean. Every step below sheds something onto the step under it, so doing them out of order means doing some of them twice. The gutters go before the walls because clearing a gutter sends black sludge down the fascia. The walls go before the windows because washing a wall puts solution and grit on the glass. The driveway goes near the end because a surface cleaner throws a fine spray of grey water for a couple of metres in every direction, and you do not want that on a wall you finished yesterday.
Give yourself a fortnight before the photographer. That leaves room for a wet week, and it lets the gardener come in behind the washing rather than in front of it.
The checklist
- Roof, if it is visible from the street or from a drone. Agents use aerial shots on almost every listing now, and a mossy roof is the first thing they show. Soft wash only, never high pressure.
- Gutters and downpipes, cleared by hand and flushed. This is also the one item on the list a building inspector will look at, so it earns its place twice.
- Fascias, eaves and barge boards. The undersides of eaves collect cobwebs and a grey film that photographs badly on a sunny day because the shadow makes it look darker than it is.
- Walls. Weatherboard, render, brick or cladding, all soft washed at low pressure. This is the biggest visual change on the whole list and the one people underestimate until they see one half done next to the other.
- Windows, frames, tracks and flyscreens, inside and out. Do them after the walls. Clean glass is the difference between a bright room and a flat one in an interior photo, and photographers shoot toward windows constantly.
- Front entry: the door, the door furniture, the porch ceiling, the light fitting, the number, the letterbox. It is a small area that every single person touches on the way in.
- Garage door. A panel lift door is a big flat rectangle facing the street and it is usually the dirtiest surface on the front of the house. Skipping it is obvious.
- Driveway and crossover, including the strip of concrete out to the road that most people forget belongs to the picture. Oil under where the car sits needs degreaser and dwell time before anything else touches it.
- Paths, front steps and the side access down to the bin area. Paths go slippery from the same algae that greens up the shaded side of the house, so this one is about not having somebody go over at an inspection as much as it is about looks.
- Fences and gates, front especially. A rendered or painted front fence gets the same soft wash as the walls; timber palings take a gentler approach again.
- Decking, pergola and outdoor entertaining areas. Buyers stand out there and imagine themselves in it. Grey, furry decking timber is a hard thing to imagine yourself into.
- Bins, air conditioning units, and anything the photographer will have to shoot around. Move what you can move and wash what you cannot.
What to skip
Do not have the paths sealed the week of the photos, and be careful about anyone offering to seal a driveway on the spot after cleaning it. Sealing is a separate decision with its own timing, and a half cured seal in a listing photo looks worse than plain clean concrete.
Do not paint over mould. If a wall needs both, wash it first and let it dry properly, then paint. Paint applied over live growth fails from underneath and it fails fast.
And do not put a pressure lance on weatherboard, render, decking or the roof, whoever suggests it. Hard surfaces take pressure. Everything else takes a soft wash. That distinction is the one thing on this page worth remembering after the house sells.
If you are only doing three things
Windows, walls, driveway. Those three cover what the camera actually sees from the street and what a buyer sees standing at the front gate. Gutters come next, and if the roof shows in an aerial shot, it jumps the queue.
Tell us the auction or photo date when you get in touch and we will work back from it. Most pre sale jobs are one visit if the exterior wash, the windows and the hard surfaces are booked together, so send a few photos of the front, the shaded side and the driveway. Our house washing page covers the wall side of it, the concrete and paving is pressure washing, and you can get the lot quoted in one go on 03 8682 8767.