5 Useful Tips for the Home Seller
If you’ve been out touring the Artisan Home Tour and found your dream home, here are some great tips for preparing your current home to sell from our guest blogger Jennifer Caughey. And even if you’re in a market with low inventory, taking this advice will move your home faster!
Selling a home can be a long and difficult process. Fortunately, there are a number of things that you can do in order to improve the chances of selling your house for an amount that you are comfortable with and within an acceptable period of time. The following are 5 tips for selling your home.
Home Selling Tips
1. Stage your home properly – Staging your home is essential to drawing the interest of potential buyers. The goal when it comes to proper staging is to give buyers the chance to see what the house will look like when fully furnished and to give them the ability to imagine what it would be like to live in the house. This isn’t possible if your house is empty. Part of staging your home successfully is making sure that your home’s space flows properly. This means that you should set up your furniture in a manner in which there is plenty of space to walk around in. For example, you’ll want potential buyers to be able to walk around the living room without bumping into the furniture. If you think that this is an issue, then consider moving some of your furniture pieces into public storage to help keep your home’s staging from becoming too cramped.
2. De-clutter the home – It doesn’t matter how amazing your house is, if it’s dirty and cluttered, no buyer is going to be drawn to it. You need to go through the house and clean it from top to bottom. This includes removing clutter, like all of those appliances shoved in your kitchen cabinets. You may want to think about packing some of your things up and putting them into storage in order to de-clutter the space. You should also take down personal items, like family photographs, as well. These make it feel like the potential buyer is walking through someone else’s home, making it difficult for them to imagine themselves living there.
De-cluttered doesn’t mean bare. Show off a plant and a few office items on a desk, place colorful items on a bookshelf that are neat and dust-free like in the gorgeous common room at Artisan Home # 11 by Hanson Builders.
3. Improve your property’s curb appeal – The importance of curb appeal cannot be overstated. Curb appeal is basically the look of your home’s exterior, from the roof to the landscape. It’s important because that is what provides potential buyers with their first impression of your home. If you have a yard that has overgrown grass full of weeds, then you’re not going to attract too many buyers. In fact, many buyers won’t even bother to come inside. You need to make sure that your lawn is trimmed and free of any debris or garbage. Trim your bushes and trees as well and make any exterior improvements, such as fixing broken roof shingles or repainting the exterior walls that will help improve your curb appeal.
4. Price your home correctly – Price your home too low and you’ll end up losing money. Price it too high and it will sit unsold for months. The longer it sits, the less of a chance you have of selling it, even if you lower the price. It’s important to realize that your home is only worth what the local market says its worth. Speak with a real estate agent about pricing the house correctly.
5. Invest in repairs – The last thing most buyers want to do is to have to spend even more time and money making repairs to the house after they’ve bought it. Invest in repairing everything that needs to be repaired, no matter how big or small. If you are selling your home, then you’ll want to do this as quickly as possible. Use these 5 tips for selling your home to keep your home from sitting unsold for months.
About the Author: Jennifer Caughey is a freelance writer who specializing in design and home improvement. Jennifer has contributed to a variety of home improvement and real estate blogs, sharing her expertise and valuable tips with readers for half a decade. Connect with Jennifer on Twitter.