I don’t know how it is where you live, but here I am starting to see houses for sale like crazy. I wonder if that means that people are starting to see relief from some of the economic craziness of the past few years? Whatever the reason, if you are thinking about putting your house up for sale too, here are a few tips on increasing the value of your home, and hopefully putting more money in your pocket:
- Paint. A fresh coat of NEUTRAL colored paint can make the house appear cleaner. Staying neutral gives you a better chance to appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Plus, paint is relatively cheap–so you get a lot of bang for your buck.
- Remove personal items and put them in storage. Yes, the pictures of your kids are endearing, but when people see personal items, they focus on them, rather than picturing themselves in the home. And, as much as you love your life-size paper mache zebra in the living room, it might not be someone else’s cup of tea {they may prefer giraffes}–it’s best to keep it a blank slate so people can imagine their own stuff in the house.
- Clean. Seriously, clean like your mother-in-law is coming to visit. The place should pass the white glove test. Don’t forget the insides of drawers, etc. Potential buyers will open and search through everything.
- Deodorize. Everyone has a unique smell, unfortunately, that is not always a good thing. If you have pets, you may not even notice the smell of your house, but potential buyers definitely will. Light a candle or bake a cake before your house shows. If you go with the candle, go with classic food smells {apple pie, etc.} over perfume-type smells.
- Create an inviting entrance. If you don’t have curb appeal, it’s pretty hard to convince the average buyer that the house is worth their time. Put a potted plant at the entrance {flowers in the summer/spring/fall and maybe a topiary in the winter}. Set out a welcome mat. Make sure the yard is tidy.
- If you have to replace floors before you can sell, opt for eco choices {like bamboo}. They are a selling feature for the home.
- Up the wattage in your light bulbs for the showings. The brighter the space, the more inviting it is to potential buyers.
- Kitchen cabinets. If the kitchen cabinets have taken a beating over the years, painting them can give new life to the kitchen for minimal cost. I don’t know about you, but nothing is more depressing than walking into an outdated and drab kitchen.
- Staging. If the weather is nice, make sure to stage outdoor selling features too. Make sure to set up the table on the patio. Put the umbrella up. Turn on the outdoor fountain if there is one. You want to draw their eye to features they may miss otherwise. Make ’em believe that entertaining outdoors is just a quick escrow away.
- Window coverings. Fresh curtains/blinds can add a lot to a room for pretty inexpensive. Old faded drapes can make a space feel dated and dark. Head over to Target and grab a couple of new panels–you’ll be shocked at what they do for the room.
Did you recently sell your house? Did you do any of these? Did they work for you?
~Mavis
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Michelle Wright says
Hey, Mavis: I sell real estate here in the area and have to say, your tips for getting a home ready to list are spot on. Good post!
Joyce Tucker says
We sold our home last May (2013). We did everything but repaint.. We pressure washed all hard surfaces, spruced up the landscaping. We staged inside and out. We put 3/4 of our closet contents and most of the stuff stored in the garage into a temporary storage facility. It makes your home appear as though you’ve got plenty of storage space.. I lived in the north Puget Sound area. We sold our home in 48 hours.. I have to agree, this is a great post!
Jamie H says
Great tips! We sold our place this past fall.We did 2 things that really helped.
1. Staging – specifically after giving the home a “fragrance” we were told to put all of our dogs toys or paraphernalia out of site. Dog stuff still lingers on a buyers mind that they may have missed an area of you home that the dog gnawed on or stained.
2. I asked my friend to bring her co-worker to our place for a walk through, on their own. The coworker was in the market for a new place but more condo sized than our 3000sq ft home. That was great, because she gave us great feedback as a buyer without actually being our customer.
Karli says
We have our doors and baseboards a coat of white paint and replaced door knobs. We also replaced old brass light fixtures. We have a dog so we also took his bowls and bedding out of the house for each showing. Lastly we wrote a letter to potential buyers about why we loved our location (we were on a corner with a road behind our house). So many people passed on our house because of the “busy” street. So we just wrote a lovely story about the house, all the updates we’d done, and when the road was actually busy. We had an offer within 4 days of writing that letter.
Frau von E says
We looked for a house for over a year (Nov. 2012 – Jan. 2014), made offers on two places that weren’t accepted, and ultimately decided to rent again because so little was on the market and prices had gotten INSANE and we smelled another bubble coming. (We are also in the Puget Sound area.) My pet peeves when touring houses were many: messy, gross homes (one guy left his nasty gym shorts on the floor of the laundry room right where he had stepped out of them, seriously people!!), too many personal items out (wedding photos, baby photos, diplomas on the wall, collections of tchotchkes, hideous paint colors/sponge-painted walls/wallpaper from 1982), cluttered closets and counter tops, and baby and pet items all over the place. We’ve sold 4 houses in 19.5 years, I know how hard it is to have your house on the market with babies and kids and pets. We had to go through it, too. (Two of our homes were on the market 5 months and 7 months respectively!) Believe me, we got top dollar for our homes by turning our lives upside down, clearing out and storing 50% or more of our stuff and I cleaned as only a German can 😉 in order to put our best foot forward for every showing. Having been through that, it made me so mad when sellers of the homes we were looking at did not make even the smallest effort. I certainly wasn’t going to waste our hard-earned money on somebody’s dumpy house. It makes me wonder how bad things are that you can’t see and how poorly the owners have maintained the home over the years.
samara k says
We just sold our house and did some of the items listed. We moved a ton of stuff in storage had house cleaners come and do a deep clean. But instead of painting the walls we just washed them. Took a little elbow grease, but even our realtor thought we had painted them. Our house sold in less than 24 hours and for higher than our asking price.