Light fascia, a not quite white, but very light colour that matches the yellow house - maybe the colour on the knobs on the platform. Same light colour for the posts & rails of the deck for all except the very top hand rail leave that grey. Like the first picture in the comments. Paint the end board on the bottom stair platform the same colour as the house. Grey stairs perhaps. Leave knobs light.

Because of the heat, you should not use dark colours on walls or roof. regarding painting of brick. Brick is an almost no maintenance cladding. When you paint it you've set yourself up for a big chore every 7 (on the west) to 10 years. Secondly, if you still want to paint it, you need to use special brick paint, or natural limewash. Bricks and mortar need to breathe. If they can't, you can have structural problems down the track. theres lots of information about limewash on the Internet.

Do not surround the carport area with things, such that you are in effect barricaded in. Even though it is not to the extreme, it produces a negative effect. The goal of landscaping is generally to minimize as much as possible all negative effects. Extend the paving out a bit and connect it to lawn. Put "things" at a distance. There might be a few exceptions to what I'm suggesting, but in order to know, you'd probably need to show a distant view from a different direction.

He might be right - you may have a beautifully furnished home that looks like a display home, that doesn't need to be staged. If not, then I would seek a few quotes for staging and get a feel for what the different staging professionals can suggest for a budget staging. Some of them may be able to show you examples of similar post-war houses that they have staged. At the end of the day there are lots of people at the entry level of the market looking to purchase their first home (who like nice looking homes) and having it nicely staged will increase the amount of interest, the amount of competition and hopefully the price, due to the laws of supply and demand. Have you engaged your agent to just sell your home, or to try and acheive the maximum sale value? Best of luck with your marketing, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls