Preparing to Sell Preparation is key to a successful sale. Let us help you prepare your home for sale and turn your "Before" into an "After" so you can sell for top dollar!
Before After
Before After
There are many necessary steps in order to insure a successful sale. Preparing your home for sale can feel like a daunting task, particularly if you are selling in a "buyer's market". However, preparing your house for sale typically, once completed, leaves the seller with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and renewal. There are several important steps to prepare your home for a successful sale. 1. Look at your home with the eyes of a buyer. Stand in front of your home and really take a look at it. Is there peeling paint? Are there dead plants? Are you able to even see the house through the sea of dead plants? Is the front porch inviting? If you were looking would you want to go inside? 2. Look at each room as if it were a movie set. Go room by room and look at it as if you were creating a movie. Buyers often get sold on the "story" of the home. As you look at your living room, does it look cluttered or out-dated? Does it look like a room that you would want to hang out in? Think about the story that you want your home to convey. Capitalize on the homes strengths. Think back to when you bought the home, what features sold you? How can you improve on those features? 3. Paint!!!! Unless it will cause an absolute financial hardship, it is always worth your time financially to paint the interior of your home, at a minimum and often times the exterior as well. Painting is one of the least expensive things that you can do to improve your home and it will always cause a home to sell faster and for more money. 4. De-clutter Look, I know you're very attached to that miniature porcelain kitten collection that you have, but it needs to be packed up. Yes, they're adorable and your Grandmother risked her life to smuggle them across the border, but that makes them too valuable to leave out while strangers wander through your home. The fact is that collections, even really cool ones, are distracting to potential buyers and often, they end up being the only thing that the buyer can remember about the home. On top of that, you want to create calm open spaces that the buyer can envision themselves living in - not full of kittens. 5. Light You have probably heard it already on HGTV or somewhere that "light is space". This is true. The more light you can create, the more spacious your home will appear. This can be achieved in several ways. if you are painting, be careful to sick to a lighter, more neutral color palette. You want to pick colors that will have broad appeal as well as creating as much space as possible. Not plain white, but something as neutral and stylish as possible. Also, for showings, I recommend that sellers leave all lights on in the house. This not only maximizes the appearance of space in each room, but it also allows the perspective buyer to enjoy an un-interrupted flow between rooms without stopping to fumble for light switches and leaving them with a better over all impression of the home. Also, it might be time to take a good hard look at some of your more dated light fixtures and consider replacing them. I know you always planned on replacing the brass and glass nightmare in your living room, but now it is definitely time. Buyers will fall in love and choose a home based on a stylish fixture. They don't have to be expensive, just functional and stylish. 6. To stage or not to stage Do it! When you sell your home you stand to capitalize on one of your greatest investments. It is worth it to do everything you can to maximize your profit. It depends on the property but staging can mean everything from just working with the furniture you have to hiring a professional stager to fully stage a vacant property. Empty properties are difficult to photograph. Large empty rooms can appear small, some tasteful furnishings can do wonders to show off the proportions of rooms. If you need your house staged I will do it for you for free! Click here to check out pictures of my beautiful staging! HOME IMPROVEMENTS The best way to protect your Real Estate investment is by improving it. However, certain home improvements pay off more than others. The following is a list based upon Perfect Property's agent's combined experience of the top ten home improvements. Cosmetic improvements always top the list because buyers respond to what they can see. These items are listed in order of cost versus value. We hope that this list is helpful to you in prioritizing your improvements. As always we are happy to discuss and assist you when you choose to improve your home. *1. PAINT, CARPET, REFINISH FLOORS GET YOUR SEWER SCOPED! Based on our experiences since 1996, Perfect Properties is recommending that every client purchasing an older home have their sewer line scoped with a camera in addition to their basic home inspection. A broken sewer line can be one of the most costly repairs that a property can incur, and replacement adds very little to your value. |
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