Since we planed to be in Georgia for at least a few years, we decided to sell out house in Lakeville, MA. My wife and I spent 9 month in 2022 getting the house ready to sell – I replaced the siding on 1/3 of the house (from wooden shingles to vinyl), replaced old trim that was a bit rotten, replaced some framing close to exterior that needed replacing, rebuilt the porch, painted the entire house outside. My wife organized a number of flower beds, did a nice stone border around the pool and other landscaping fun.
We installed additional vinyl fence at the entrance and made the ramp leading into the yard from dirt only into gravel+pavers. We also distributed 20 cubic yards (about same in cubic meters) of dark brown mulch and added edging along the asphalt driveway. And I installed 2 small retaining walls to make the entrance look nicer. That completely eliminated any runoff of sand and dirt when it rains.
It took me additional 3 months to refresh and re-paint the entire house interior, all rooms but one.
As a result the house looked great. (Will add some pictures here for reference). I suggest to invest what you can into making your house look nice.
As I planned to move from the US, I left my nice AWS job and last 3 months of 2022 focused exclusively on getting the house interior ready for sale.
All that 9 months of work paid off, we listed our house mid-march – on a Thursday, had 2 open houses following that on Saturday and Sunday and received 4 offers by Monday. So with Purchase and Sales agreement signed, I started the next phase- cleaning up the house by move date.
If you are in the US – we used Redfin to facilitate the sales process and I feel it was definitely worth it. We used them to buy this house 13 years ago as well, and also had a great experience. Their process is very well organized and website is awesome to keep track of the listing, documents and important milestones.
My recommendation: evaluate your local housing market situation and decide if it makes more sense to invest in making your house more desirable or sell it as is. And if you are renting – this is not an issue for you at all, just move out when your lese is over.