The Joy of Gardening: Late-Summer Notes on Curb Appeal to Upgrade Your Property Valuation

A buyer decides how they feel about a house before they reach the front door. Estate agents have known this for as long as there have been estate agents, but it is worth saying in plain numbers rather than folklore. Nearly all buyers, 93 per cent in one industry study, judge a property on its exterior before anything else. Three in four say first impressions are not merely important but everything. Some are willing to pay for it directly. Roughly a third of buyers say they would offer £5,000 or more for an identical property with genuinely good kerb appeal over one without it.

None of this is about a show garden or a professional landscaping budget. It is about the ten minutes a viewer spends standing on your path before they have seen a single room, and what your garden tells them in that time. Late summer, while the borders are still full and nothing has died back into the bare, brownish look of early autumn, is the best window of the entire year to have that conversation go your way.

What buyers are actually pricing in