Selling a home can be both exciting and very scary, as not every home sells for the price you want it to sell, or worse, not get any buyers at all. You must be doing everything that you can to make your home as appealing as possible, without spending a ton of unnecessary money on services that might not improve the value of the listing.
Over the past couple of years we bought and sold two homes in different states and have a lot of tips on what to put your efforts into when getting the house ready to sell
Research the Market
Just because you’re working with the realtor, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do your own market research. Check the value of neighboring homes and pay attention to whether anything is selling (or not) nearby. This will help you determine the price. You don’t want to list your house too high and see if anyone buys it.
Why? Firstly, simply because it will scare the potential buyers away. Many people might not even come for the open house or enquire if they see a house listed for $800,000, but if the house is listed for $600,000 they might visit it and if they love it, still offer a lot over asking.
Secondly, if you overestimate the value of the house and have to lower the price, potential buyers might also get scared as they suspect something might be wrong with the house you’re selling.
Don’t entirely trust Zillow when it comes to the estimated value of your home. They’re not always accurate, especially in tough markets. In our experience, it overestimated the value of our second house in NC, while it underestimated the first one in UT.
Carry Out Only Certain Repairs
When you’re selling your home, it’s safe to assume that you’ve been keeping it in good condition already, but over the years things might break or need replacing. You will need to do is make repairs before you think about listing your home for sale, but you don’t want to overdo it.
People don’t want to buy fixer-uppers, and they won’t want to carry out DIY tasks as soon as they move in. However, things like repainting kitchen cabinets or walls might not add the value of the place because people might want to switch the colors anyway.
You need to think about the big things: windows, floors, patios, roof – things that aren’t easy to do yourself if you want to move in straight away. Check out replacement window companies to find out how much this will cost you. See if maybe it’s worth replacing the HVAC.
Make a list of all the things that need doing. It might be holes in the wall from various screws or windows that need replacing and see what can you do and what you need to outsource.
In our case, switching from carpets to vinyl flooring was a good call, along with repairing the patio. On the other hand, when a rabbit ate parts of the carpet, we ended up not fixing it, and I was right – the buyer wanted to put a different carpet in that room anyway, so it didn’t matter to them.
Declutter for Staging
One of the first things you should do is getting rid of all clutter by starting to pack things into storage way before selling. You’re not going to end up taking a whole load of stuff that you simply don’t need with you and you’ll quickly discover how many things you don’t need. I sold so many clothes, toys, and random items on Mercari and Facebook Marketplace.
It’s a big task, so to get yourself in the right mindset, you should come up with a plan for how you’re going to tackle this. Organize your kids toys, clean up closets, and remove random decorations.
Stage It
Lastly, when you are ready to sell your home then you will need to find a realtor to list it with. That way, you’re more likely to gain interest from potential buyers rather than trying to sell it privately yourself. A realtor will have a photographer that they use for the online photos and that’s always included in their fee.
For these to look amazing, it is recommended that you spend time staging your home. When you stage your home, you are essentially showing it off and making it look like a show home. You don’t want personal stuff in your home. If you are trying to show off a bedroom, then make sure the bed is made and there is nothing else around.
Make Things Memorable
When it comes to staging, one tip that might be strange to people is to make your house memorable somehow. Potential buyers will be looking at many different homes, and as a result, they might forget which house they are seeing in case they want to come back to it. It could be something simple, like a statue in the garden or at the entrance.
In our case, I had a removable wallpaper put in the bathrooms of both houses. First, I had a flamingo bathroom and then I had an alien toile bathroom. I made a note that these can be removed in 5 minutes, but many buyers (and their agents too!) had a kick out of it and our houses were referred as “the house with the alien bathroom”.
I hope you found this helpful and it gave you some ideas on how to sell your home and get a great price for it!
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