Decluttering/getting houses ready for selling

[Spicynicy]

Would you pay for someone to come and clear out a room or rooms in your house if you had neither the time nor the inclination to do it yourself, given the manic lives we all live now?
I am thinking of setting this up as part of a service getting houses ready for selling or as one off declutters for busy people and wondered if it would be popular or not?
Thanks

personally, I would hate that.

would you throw things away or just tidy up and put in storage ? If its the latter then i could see it might have some attraction for some, but what would happen if you threw away some old tat that was a family heirloom.

mind you I am a bit of a hoarder so you might not want to listen to me

It would be agreed terms of whether things were stored in the house, or externally or disposed of according to the individual paying for the service. I can see your point about chucking away the sentimental stuff though so it would be something I would have to take insurance against!
Thanks for the feedback, maybe as a hoarder i could come and test out my business and see if you're impressed or not!!! :-)))

Obviously dependsing on cost, etc., but in theory, I would. I too am a hoarder. Sometimes I think "I don't need that" but I need someone to sell it for me, or take it to someone who can use it (be that a charity or someone on Freegle, or even just a family they know). I can't bear the thought of something being thrown away when it might be useful to someone.
I would presume that I was there too, and the person would clear stuff I said could go, obviously not just cmoing in with a big black bin bag and taking away all my stuff.

I would pay for someone to pack up stuff and maybe to dress the house a bit prior to selling especially if it would mean a better selling price. Decluttering though, (throwing stuff away), I wouldn't let anyone do for me although I would be happy for people to work alongside me. HTH

Thanks everyone, this all helps me to work out a target market, whether to specialise in one area and devise a USP or be all things clean and tidy to all people!

I would usually say be good at one thing and focus on it. But here I think you would have more success with a wider house prep sevice, dress, tidy and declutter.

My house is dreadfully cluttered..I'll bet it knocks the PP's houses into a cocked hat. My very dear best friend keeps trying to let me, let her loose on the house but I won't. Only I know what is what with my junk and since I would have to be there and supervise every little thing, I may as well do it myself!

What I would consider is someone to dress the house, then maintain it untill it is sold. So you would come out and advise works needed, like a lick of paint etc. Then dress the house, then come and clean and re set it once a week so that it is always ready to view.

I would in theory anyway. I probably wouldn't use you in practice as I'm confident I can do all of this myself. I do think there will be a market for this but I'm not sure how big a market.

A friend in Canada said this service is very common. The dresser comes and puts up their own art on walls etc and stages the house and loans you some decorative stuff. It sounds a good idea to me.

I'm not sure how time/cost effective it would be. I think it might end up a bit like hiring a cleaner but cleaning before they turn up because you don't want them to see how dirty and messy you are! In which case, you are already doing the job so why pay for someone to riffle through your personal items.

I have come back to this after thinking on it as I realised I sounded awfully negative with my first response.

I still think throwing away stuff could be a bad thing (just watch secret hoarders on TV to see how screwed up people are about these things) but boxing things up and dressing the house is definitely a winner.

I have a few houses and when we sold our last house almost a year ago it looked like a show house because we had moved a lot of the junk out into our other holiday home and decorated it with all ours best pieces of furniture, fancy lamps, modern mirrors etc and a few statement wow pieces of designer furniture.

The house itself needed a repaint which we didn't hide -after all we were selling it as a family home with 5 people and a dog in it, but i definitely think the photos in the particulars we had looked great and all the comments were very positive. We sold quickly too in a difficult market.

Good luck with your venture !

Thank you everyone for your comments and advice, it is all really useful and honest so I now have lots of planning and thinking to do! Exciting times though:-)