It seems that when it comes to getting a home prepared to be shown to prospective buyers we make a lot of mistakes in presentation. Some of these mistakes include things such as not changing interior wall colors  to give the room a much warmer tone to it. Not packing away a lot of the home owner's personal touches, such as decorator plates and little figures in display cases. These items are really not appropriate when staging a home to create an appealing atmosphere for a prospective buyer. But there is one area of your home that is never properly attended to when it comes to making final preparations for that all important open house. The kind of curb appeal that the front of your home actually has can make or break the sale of your home. If the outside is not maintained or kept, they will assume the inside isn't either. 

Curb appeal is simply what may need to be done to the front and back of your home to make it much more appealing to a buyer. Some of the things that you will want to pay attention to include the following:

• Landscaping
• Weeds
• Plants
• Trees and Shrubs
• Grass

A beautifully landscaped front lawn, including the area by the front curb of your home easily adds value and makes your home much more inviting to people arriving to your open house. Adding a curbside garden is a great way to attract the eye of everyone who comes to visit your home, and begin the process of sprucing up the front of your home. This is a small project and can be accomplished over a nice and sunny weekend. The first thing to do to create a curb garden is take out the old grass that is presently taking up space there, then add some new potting soil that has all of the nutrients needed to support the growth of new plants.

Once that has been accomplished then it's time to choose a few plants that will complement the front of your home. You want to purchase simple little plants that will add a touch of elegance or color to that curb garden. Then add some plants for support of the main specimen pieces. The main idea here is that the support plants will bring out the unique qualities of your main plants. Add some mulch or wood chips that will offset the colors of your plants and you're done.

Pay attention to the regular maintenance of your lawn. Mowing your lawn at least twice a week will keep the grass at an acceptable height. Removing weeds from your lawn is also a very important detail for proper lawn appearance. Those puffy looking little dandelions tend to populate very quickly and along with crabgrass just becomes a detriment to a nice and healthy looking lawn so they need to be removed as quickly as possible by their roots.
(this article taken in part from the Houston Real Estate Observer, & Writer,  Tim Ryan, )