What repairs are worth doing before selling?

Four tests for any job

• Will a buyer see it in the first minute. The gate, the path, the front door, the entry, how the house smells, the kitchen and the main bathroom. An opinion forms there, before anyone reads the listing.
• Will an inspector write it down. A building report is a written list a buyer takes to their lawyer and back to you. Loose spouting, a dripping tap, a missing handrail, a soft deck board, a door that will not close.
• Is it cheap to fix and expensive to explain. A broken window catch is an afternoon. On a report it becomes a line item a buyer prices at their own guess, and their guess is rarely generous.
• Can it be finished in time. Trades book out. A job that delays the campaign, or that is half done during the open homes, costs more than the fault it was meant to fix.

The jobs that usually pass all four

• Water. Dripping taps, running toilets, blocked gutters, a leaking downpipe, silicone gone black around a shower.
• Things that do not work. Lights, extractor fans, oven elements, door handles, window stays, the garage door remote.
• Safety. Loose handrails, a wobbly step, smoke alarms.
• Outside. Cleaning the roof and paths, cutting growth back off the cladding, clearing subfloor vents, tidying the garden and the edges.

Where to stop

Large jobs are a different decision. A new kitchen, a new bathroom or a reclad is a project with a budget, a timeline and often a consent, and it needs to be treated as one rather than slipped in alongside a campaign.

The same goes for anything structural or weathertight. Patching the symptom of a leak makes it harder to explain later, and once you know about it, it is a known defect that has to be disclosed.

What repairs do not do

Fixing things does not remove the obligation to be straight about the house. Unconsented work, past weathertightness repairs, or a known fault you have decided not to fix still get disclosed. Rule 6.4 of the Client Care Rules says a licensee must not mislead a customer or client, nor provide false information, nor withhold information that should by law or in fairness be provided.

Write your repair list from a walk through with fresh eyes, or from a building report if you have one, and work down it in the order above.