What should you pressure wash before selling a house in San Diego?
Before listing a San Diego home, pressure wash the driveway, front walkway, entry stucco, and back patio. Those four surfaces carry the most weight in listing photos. Expect $300 to $650 for a single-story exterior, more if the driveway holds oil stains or the siding needs a soft wash instead.
Last updated: July 2026
We get these calls in waves every spring. A Kensington seller lists, the agent walks the property, and the first note is almost always the driveway.
Dirty concrete reads as neglect in a photo. Buyers scrolling listings at midnight do not separate a stained driveway from a bad roof. It all looks like deferred maintenance.
Which surfaces matter most in listing photos?
The camera catches the approach first. Driveway, walkway, front steps, and the stucco around the entry. Those are the pixels a buyer sees before they read a single line of the listing.
Back patios matter for the second set of photos, the ones that sell the lifestyle. We cleaned a North Park Craftsman last April where the back patio had ten years of jacaranda stain ground into the pavers. Two hours with a 16 inch surface cleaner at 3000 PSI, and it photographed like new.
How much does it cost to pressure wash before listing?
Most single-story listing prep lands between $300 and $650. Two-story homes with a lot of soft-wash siding push toward $900. The number moves on stain load, not square footage.
| Surface | Method | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Driveway (2-car) | Surface cleaner, 3000 PSI | $100 to $250 |
| Front walkway and steps | Surface cleaner plus wand | $75 to $150 |
| Entry stucco and siding | Soft wash, 100 to 150 PSI | $150 to $350 |
| Back patio or pool deck | Surface cleaner, 3000 PSI | $150 to $400 |
Stucco and painted siding do not get pressure. We drop to a soft wash at 100 to 150 PSI with a sodium hypochlorite mix, let it dwell, then rinse. Hit stucco with a 3000 PSI wand and you strip the finish coat. We have repaired that for sellers who tried it themselves the weekend before photos.
When should you schedule the wash?
Book it two or three days before the photographer, not the morning of. San Diego's marine layer leaves surfaces damp into late morning through May and June, and stucco needs to dry before it photographs evenly.
And skip the wash the same week you seal anything. Sealer needs clean, dry concrete, and rushing both jobs into one weekend leaves a cloudy finish that shows in every wide shot. See our driveway power washing cost breakdown for what that add-on runs.
What we skip
Roofs, unless there is visible algae streaking that shows in a drone shot. Most listing roofs do not need it, and a hard wash on old composition shingle does more harm than good. When a roof does need attention, we handle it with a low-pressure rinse. Our soft washing and full service pages cover how we treat painted and delicate surfaces without stripping them.