Preparing Your Home for Sale

Selling Your Home: 6 Tips for Getting Ready

Selling your home can be emotional, stressful, and aggravating. However, if you do a few things before you put your home on the market, you can alleviate most of the hassle and maybe even sell your home quicker and for more money than if you list your home without making any preparations. Following are six things you should do before putting your home on the market:

1. De-Personalize Your Home – Remove all personal items such as family photos, mementos, and personal collections. Doing this serves two purposes. First, de-personalizing your home allows you to see it for what it is, a house or an asset. When you stop associating your memories with your home, you make the whole process of selling your house less emotional. Removing your personal items also allows buyers to see their stuff in your space, which results in more offers.
2. De-Clutter and Organize – Rent a storage space and get rid of everything except your essentials. Buyers have a hard time seeing around clutter, and it may even make your home appear smaller, less functional. So, get rid of the mess and organize everything neatly, getting your house ready for sale. Organization is especially necessary for closets and cupboards.
3. Clean – Deep clean your house from top to bottom, washing down walls and doing those tasks you haven’t gotten to for a while. Buyers can smell dirt even if they can’t see it. You want your house to feel clean and inviting.
4. Remove Fixtures that Aren’t Going to Stay – If you plan on taking some light fixtures or appliances with you when you move, don’t leave them in your home for buyers to fall in love with. You don’t want an offer on your home to fall apart because a buyer really fell in love with the chandelier in the entry only to find out that it’s not part of the package deal. Bottom line: If a buyer never sees it, they won’t know what they’re not getting.
5. Spruce Up – Nothing turns off buyers more than the lack of curb appeal. Go outside and scrutinize your home’s exterior and take care of any flaws. You want buyers to want to take that step through the door.
6. Hire the Right Realtor – If you want a smooth sale, you have to hire a realtor that is extremely knowledgeable and experienced about the market in which you live. To hire the best contact The Cope Team.

Before placing your home for sale, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the process so you will know what to expect each step along the way. Nothing alleviates stress more than knowing exactly what’s waiting for you around the corner.