When putting their house up for sale, many homeowners hope to find a buyer quickly and get the highest price possible for their property.
However, hope is not a strategy!
Taking the time to prepare your home for sale so it looks its best before you list it is a guaranteed way to ensure potential homebuyers are immediately impressed by it and eager to make you good offers after viewing. This involves doing several things, from decluttering to staging.
In this post, we’ll go over some of the best ways to prepare your house for the real estate market so it gets noticed, and sells quickly for top dollar.
A Checklist to Help You Get Your Home Ready to Sell
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Purge Your Home to Make It Appear More Roomy
If you take a quick look at online property listings, you’ll find that most homes have been decluttered.
Why? Cluttered spaces, such as basements, garages, and attics, can be a major turnoff for potential buyers because they make rooms appear smaller and less attractive and also make it challenging for potential buyers to imagine themselves living there.
Therefore, to avoid losing out on a sale and extending the time your house is on the market, you must declutter your home.
We advise going through your entire home and getting rid of any excess furniture, knick-knacks, and other items that are taking up space in the different rooms. Keep in mind that buyers will peek inside your cabinets, closets, and basement, so don’t just stuff things there. You could dispose of items you no longer want or need by selling or donating them or putting them in storage containers that can be placed neatly in the closet, basement, or tucked beneath beds.
If you’ve gathered a lot of items over the years, you might want to rent a storage unit, which will cost you $30 to $300 monthly – depending on its size, location, and amenities like an intruder alarm and climate control.
Your goal when decluttering should be to create a clean, streamlined appearance that will increase your home’s appeal to buyers and enable them to concentrate on its beauty rather than the crammed closets, countless accessories, and excess junk.
By the way, because you’ll have fewer things and some that have already been packed, decluttering will also make it easier to move once you sell the house!
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Do the Simple Repairs
You can easily sell a home as-is in a sellers’ market, which is when there is a high demand for homes but a limited inventory.
However, in a buyers’ market, where there are more homes for sale than there are interested buyers, failing to address issues in your home, such as dripping bathroom faucets, stained carpets, cracked tiles, loose door knobs, broken appliances, and other obvious repairs, can turn away buyers who want a move-in-ready home and are often willing to pay more for a property that is in good condition.
Again, we advise going through each room of your house to inspect for wear and tear. To determine what repairs are required before allowing potential buyers to tour your home, you may also have a pre-sale inspection performed. This will cost you anywhere from $200.
You can do some of the identified repairs as DIY projects to save money. For example, you could change a malfunctioning smoke detector yourself. If this is your first time performing simple home repairs, there are many YouTube videos and online articles that can guide you on how to do it correctly.
If you don’t want to do any renovations or there are expensive repairs that need to be made, such as replacing a leaky roof, you could price your house below market value to account for the repair work the new homeowner will have to undertake.
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Make Your Home’s Curb Standout
As a player in the real estate industry, we have observed many prospective homebuyers cross the street to a home they’re viewing to look at its exterior from top to bottom.
You must therefore make sure your curb is well-maintained and attractive. Trimming the bushes, mowing the lawn, planting vibrant flowers in the front yard, repainting the front door, buying a new doormat to provide a welcoming entrance, and thoroughly cleaning the outside are a few things you may do to enhance your home’s curb appeal.
Most of these curb appeal improvements won’t set you back much money or time, and they’ll not only give potential buyers a favorable first impression, but they might also speed up and increase the sale price of your home by thousands of dollars.
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Repaint the Walls
Most real estate agents encourage their clients to paint their homes or, at the very least, touch up any areas that need it if it was repainted not very long ago.
They advise this for several reasons, including the fact that painting your house can increase its worth, give it a fresh vibe, and make the rooms appear bigger, brighter, and more welcoming, which may appeal to buyers.
Like many homeowners, you might decide to paint your house yourself or pay a professional painter between $170 and $680 per room.
Stick to warm neutral colors like beige, tan, gold, white, and gray since they’re popular choices, and they provide a clean and fresh canvas for potential buyers to envision their own decor.
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Deep Clean Your Home
Another great way to prepare your home for sale and leave a positive impression on prospective buyers is to keep it spotless — this entails thoroughly cleaning every surface, from the floors to the ceiling, to remove debris, dust, offensive odors, etc.
The last thing you want when homebuyers tour your house is for them to be turned off by the countless cobwebs hanging from your ceilings or by how filthy the place is.
Consider hiring a professional cleaning company to ensure your house is sparkling clean before you list it.
Also, you want to keep your house presentable while it’s on the market. So, make a habit of regularly vacuuming the carpets, mopping the floors, wiping down the surfaces, dusting the furniture, scrubbing the bathrooms, cleaning the rugs, etc.
Other things you can do to prepare your home for sale include:
- Determining the right sale price. Pricing your home too high can lead to it sitting on the market for an extended period, while pricing it too low may result in leaving money on the table.
You should work with a real estate agent to establish your home’s fair market value based on similar homes recently sold in your neighborhood.
- Stage your home. Staging involves arranging furniture and decor in a way that highlights your home’s best features. A few examples include moving furniture to make spaces appear larger, adding artwork or decorative items to create a focal point, and strategically placing lighting to make rooms feel cozy and welcoming.
According to Realtor.com, staging your house can increase its sale price by 20% and speed up the selling process by 88%.
- Remove Pets. Not everyone loves pets, and some people may be allergic. Consider temporarily removing pets from your home during showings.
HomeBuyers of Pittsburgh: The #1 Professional Home Buyer
Want to avoid the trouble of getting your house ready for sale as well as the stressful, lengthy, and uncertain home-selling process? Give HomeBuyers of Pittsburgh a shot when selling your property.
We pay cash for homes in any condition, and we can make you a competitive cash offer for your house within hours of you contacting us. This allows you to skip the pricey house renovations, time-consuming staging, and endless showings. Plus, if you accept our offer, we can close the home sale in a matter of days, giving you the money needed to move to your next home with ease.
We can start the quick and easy process of selling your home right away if you give us a call at 412-444-8914 or send us an email at [email protected] today!
