Thinking of listing your home to sell can feel both exciting and overwhelming. Your next big move in life is full of adventure, anticipation, and possibly a little bit of stress. When you take the time and make the effort to prepare your home with these 8 Pre-Listing Tips, the showing process is less chaotic, packing becomes easier, and the overall process feels smoother. You know what they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is certainly true when it comes to readying your home for the market. Staging your home to sell is the smartest path to a quick, top dollar sale. Starting with these 8 Pre-Listing Tips will put you ahead of the competition.
Declutter, Deep Clean, and Depersonalize –
This is the most important tip! These three D’s are critical to selling successfully. Even the humblest home will sell quickly if you’ve taken the time to get rid of clutter, deep clean it, and depersonalize it. When you declutter, you create space and take distractions away from the buyers view. This is also a great time to donate, discard, and pre-pack items you don’t use every day. Pre-packing will save you time and stress when you go under contract.
A clean home is a comfortable home. When you scrub each room, top to bottom, the room feels great, looks good, and is more inviting. Buyers will feel this too. No one wants to live in someone else’s dirt. Be sure your home is spotless and hid all signs of your beloved pets!
Depersonalizing is what trips us up the most. When you have personal, religious, or political items in your home, you are allowing the buyer to profile you. They may or may not like or agree with your tastes and leanings, so pack them away and go with neutral items instead. This includes your trophy animals on the wall. Even if hunting appeals to half your buyers, you have just alienated the other half. When your goal is to appeal to the widest audience possible, it’s best to keep your home neutral. Remember, once you list your home on the market, you have to look at it as no longer yours.
Play up Curb Appeal –
When the very first online listing photo is the view from the curb, your curb appeal better grab the buyer’s attention in a good way! Consider painting your front door a fresh coat of black paint – According to Zillow, black front doors have historically increased a home’s sales price by thousands. If you add a fresh welcome mat, potted flowers, and give your home a power wash, your buyers will be drawn to the clean, inviting, and appealing home they see online. If they like what they see online, buyers will want to schedule a showing.
Wash the Windows –
Windows are often overlooked when preparing a home for sale. This is tragic! Everyone enjoys a view of the world outside. When you clean your windows, inside and out, the view of the outside world is crisper, cleaner, and brings a bit of the outdoors in. Gazing outside gives out brains a quick cognitive boost that improves memory, attention, and creativity. Make sure your windows shine so that your buyers enjoy these benefits as they walk through the home.
Clean the Floors –
No matter what type of flooring you have in your home, be sure it’s clean! Polish the hardwoods, have the carpets cleaned, mop the tile with a fresh scented cleaner. Floors are the largest surface area in a home. Buyers will notice if they look dingy. When you deep clean before listing, the spot mopping and quick vacuum jobs are easier to maintain before showings.
Add Pops of Color –
Color is important! It’s easy to neutralize a home in the 3 D’s phase, but you don’t want a home devoid of life. Consider investing in some quality artificial plants if your green thumb is less than desired. Greenery in a home is the best way to add life to a space. Add a lush centerpiece to your dining table. A small potted plant to your bathroom counter. When you add bits of green to each room, your online listing photos will feel fresh and alive.
Decorating with pops of color is another great way to show your home’s personality. Consider creating a color story for your home. When you keep the pops to a minimum, and consistently use the same color story in each room, your home will stand out online and draw the buyers’ eye. Do you need to repaint a wall that has seen too many scuffs and dings? Go with a neutral paint color so that you can incorporate pops of color without making the room too busy.
Open Curtains and Blinds –
Once you’ve spent some time washing your windows, open the blinds and curtains! Natural light flooding a space has been proven to improve our health and make us happier. Why not provide this to your buyers when they walk through the home? When you are ready to do your MLS photos, and for each showing, be sure to have the curtains opened wide and the blinds too. Photos look best when a room is lit naturally.
Tend to the Landscaping –
Once you’ve increased your homes curb appeal, it’s time to focus on the rest of the landscaping. When you list your home, maintaining your landscaping is a must! Doing the heavy work before you list makes it easier to keep the appearance up. Weed the garden beds, edge the lawns, add fresh flowers and mulch. Mowing the grass is important to keep up on. Try to eliminate any weeds in the grass by spraying or hiring a company, if you are too busy. Buyers love their outdoor spaces and having a yard that looks well cared for and welcoming will bring offers.
Tidy the Front Entrance –
The first impression of the inside of your home starts with the entry way. Keep it simple with a console table, greenery, and a tray to catch mail, keys, and other small odds and ends. Hanging a mirror in your entry is a staging trick to consider. When your buyer walks in and sees themself in the mirror, they are literally seeing themself in your home. That’s the goal! You want buyers to imagine living in the home and emotionally connect to it. Start that by creating a clean, decluttered entry that they can literally see themselves in.
Remember, when you don’t prepare your home and stage it, you are only helping sell your competition. These 8 Pre-Listing Tips apply to all homes that are about to hit the market and they’re simple to follow for any homeowner willing to do the work. Increase your homes perceived value by checking off each of these 8 Pre-Listing Tips. Then call for a Home Staging Consultation! Together we will walk through each area in your home create a workable action plan to fine-tune each space and get the most from your biggest investment.
Enjoy!
