How to prepare an apartment for sale

Preparing a property for sale comes down to three things: a deep clean, minor repairs, and removing personal belongings so a buyer can picture themselves in the space. Together with professional photography, this is a few hundred euros of investment that affects both the price achieved and how quickly the property sells. A major renovation immediately before selling almost never returns what it costs.

What is worth spending money on before selling?

Spend on what a buyer notices in the first three minutes and that does not impose your taste: cleanliness, light, things that work, and a tidy first impression. Do not spend on decisions buyers prefer to make themselves — tiles, flooring, kitchen units.

This is particularly true in the luxury segment, where buyers almost always renovate to their own specification. A new bathroom in someone else's choice of materials is not value to them; it is a demolition cost.

A useful filter for any decision: *does this remove an objection, or impose a choice?* Removing objections pays. Imposing choices does not.

What should be done before photography?

Seven items, in this order: deep clean including windows and grouting; minor repairs (handles, switches, dripping taps, bathroom sealant); repainting where walls are worn or strongly coloured; depersonalising (family photographs, documents, medication); decluttering by roughly a third, because a full property reads as smaller than it is; light (every bulb working and matched in colour temperature, blinds up); and ventilation, with no strong air fresheners, which read as concealment.

What if I do not live in the property?

An empty property needs the opposite treatment to an occupied one: it needs furnishing or staging, because empty rooms photograph smaller and colder than they are and buyers struggle to judge what fits where.

If you are abroad, three things need a person on the ground: someone to let in the cleaner, photographer and any tradesperson; someone to check the property between viewings; and a decision on whether to stage it. All three can be handled by the agency as part of the engagement — agree explicitly who does what before the property goes live.

Utilities should stay connected through the sale. A property shown with the electricity cut off is effectively unsellable at a good price.

What is not worth doing?

Major renovation, replacing the kitchen, changing the layout, or any large "value investment" immediately before listing. The money rarely comes back and the sale is delayed by months.

Also avoid renovating a single room, which makes the rest look neglected by comparison; strong design statements such as bold wallpaper or dark colours; and concealing defects. Damp painted over before a viewing reappears with the first rain and destroys the buyer's trust in everything else that was said.

A defect that is not worth fixing is better disclosed and priced in. Buyers respond well to it and negotiations move faster afterwards.

How much do photographs matter?

More than anything else in the presentation. Buyers decide whether to view at all from 10 to 15 images on a screen.

Professional photography means a tripod, prepared framing, daylight and perspective correction. Phone photographs taken at night with a wide-angle distortion actively harm a luxury listing — they signal that even the owner did not consider the property worth the effort.

For higher-value properties, video, a floor plan and, on exceptional locations, aerial footage are justified. KADENA Sotheby's produces the presentation within the agency commission, at no separate charge.

How should viewings be run?

By the agent, without the owner present, in daylight, with prepared answers on running costs, the building, the neighbourhood and the documentation.

Owners present at viewings tend to suppress exactly the conversation that helps: buyers hesitate to open cupboards, comment honestly or raise objections — and an objection that is never voiced can never be answered.

What documentation should be ready to answer those questions is covered in our guide to the documents required to sell a property.

How long does preparation take?

Anything from a few days to two weeks, depending on the condition of the property and whether it is being repainted. Book the photographer after preparation, never before.

This is the one part of the process entirely under the owner's control, and the fastest-paying. The full sequence that follows is in our guide to selling a property in Serbia.