Tree Care When Selling Your Home

Selling your home can be very stressful.  However, with a few tips on making your home more appealing, you can increase your chances for a sale exponentially!  While there are many tips being offered to make your house feel more like a home, and dressing up your house for appeal, we will be focusing on what you can do to the trees around your home to make it look more inviting.

The trees around your home can play a very big part in your home’s sale. According to the Management Information Services/ICMA, ‘Landscaping, especially with trees, can increase property values as much as 20 percent.’   By looking at the following list, and checking to make sure that you are addressing key issues with your trees, you may be able to increase the likelihood of a sale closer to the price that you are asking, as well as a quicker turn around on your sale, assuming you have done everything else to make your home more appealing to a buyer.

Checklist

• Prune trees and shrubs away from your house.  I cannot stress this enough!  By pruning your trees and shrubs away from your house, you can expose your home’s exterior which will give the illusion of a bigger home, and show your buyer the home’s potential.  This will also allow you to see if any damage is being hidden, and take care of that before a buyer points it out.
• Prune and/or Shape trees and shrubs around house for detail.  This is all about the curb appeal.  Properly pruned and shaped trees and shrubs are inviting to a potential buyer.   If any trees or shrubs are overgrown, it takes away from the beauty of the home itself by making the home feel as if it’s been neglected.  This goes along with pruning your trees and shrubs away from the house, but it goes beyond.  Take a look at any trees and shrubs that are immediately around your house.  Do they look like they are wild growing, or do they look like they have been properly cared for?  If they look like they need some maintenance, address that prior to any potential buyers looking at the house.   If any of them are really overgrown, you may want to consider removing the tree or shrub all together. Your objective is to sell the house before they walk in the door!
• Prune any trees away from your roof.  When trees are too close or on top of the roof, you risk damaging your home through friction, moisture, lack of sunlight which may cause mold, as well as animal access.  A potential buyer can see this as a risk, and ask for a reduction in your home’s price with the assumption that they will have to replace the roofing soon.  By pruning your trees away from the roof, you can see whether any damage has been caused underneath, and address that problem promptly.  Also, pruning your trees away from your roof will enable a cleaner appeal to a potential buyer by allowing more sunlight to penetrate through to your home.
• Address any Hazardous limbs.  These can include dead limbs or leads going over your high traffic areas such as walkways, play areas, house, driveway, and your patio or deck. Any dead limbs or branches should be removed (by a professional.) It can also include heavy limbs that protrude from the tree making it appear that it may break off at any time.  These heavy limbs don’t necessarily need to be removed, they can be cabled to the main trunk or another limb so that it’s weight is dispersed within the canopy of the tree during high winds.  Either way, addressing these beforehand will ensure a potential buyer doesn’t ask for a reduced price, or make you take care of it prior to any sale.
• Remove Dead Trees.  There is nothing worse than driving up to a house and seeing a dead tree in the yard!  I know sometimes trees just die, that is a fact of life, but nobody wants to see a dead tree when they are looking at a potential home to purchase!  You may not be bothered by your dead tree, but someone looking at your home is looking at that as one more thing they need to do.  Also, if you are not addressing a dead tree on your property, what else have you not addressed?  Your potential buyer may end up driving by instead of scheduling an appointment to view your home.
• Raise up any low growing branches.  Raising your branches allows for a nice visual landscape when looking at your yard.  It also enables you to cut your grass without having to bend over.  Both of these aspects will create curb appeal to your yard, and can be easily achieved.  For tips on proper pruning practices, please visit the TreeHelp.com’s website here.
• Crown Clean to allow more sunlight.  Crown Cleaning your trees means to clean up any dead or diseased branches, to take out excess growth, and to lighten the canopy of the tree.  When you Crown Clean your tree, you are allowing more sunlight and wind penetration through the canopy which makes it less susceptible to wind damage and fungal problems within the canopy of the tree.  While you may not be too concerned with wind flow through your tree, you may want to allow more sunlight through your trees to make them seem lighter, and enable more sunlight in your yard (for heavily wooded yards), as well as allowing sunlight to penetrate through to your home to give it a brighter look to a potential buyer.
• Consider installing small ornamental trees or shrubs in key spots around your home.   Small ornamental trees or shrubs can give your home some added curb appeal without breaking the bank.  Adding ornamental trees and shrubs are a great way to add a splash of color to your home, similar to adding plants, but you give your potential buyer the illusion that you have invested a lot of money into your landscaping.  Great Ornamentals to include would be:  Crabapples ‘malus’, ServiceBerries ‘amelanchier’, or Eastern Redbud ‘cersis canadensis’.    
  

Good Shrubs to include would be Viburnum or Lilac ‘syringa vulgaris’.

It’s all about Creating a Yard that Sells Before a Prospect Walks through the Doors

In sum, these are the biggest items to look at in your yard in regard to your trees and shrubs.  I hope this checklist can help you when selling your home.  If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below.  Keep in mind, the interior of your home is a huge factor when you’re putting your home on the market, but creating a yard that sells your home before a potential buyer even walks through the door is ideal.  Putting a little extra money into your trees and shrubs before listing your home can add up to more money being offered later.

If you need any help with your trees and shrubs, be sure to contact a professional tree care company, (such as ours if you’re in the McHenry County, IL area or surrounding.)