The first thing I’d like to say on this is don’t wait to sell your home to do some of these things I am going to recommend….  And the reason I say this is because I lived it.  My ex-husband (we were married at the time) and I were selling our first home in Weston in 2001, and we had a real estate firm come to our house to price it and give us any selling recommendations.  (At this time, I had my real estate license, but I wasn’t actively in the business.)  So anyway, they suggested two things – cleaning/washing the windows and carpeting the basement (there were cracked floor tiles and when anyone sees these in a house built in the 1950s, they automatically think asbestos tiles).  We took their advice and spent the money on those improvements.  And when we were done, I questioned why we were moving.  Not really, but in a way.  We kept saying to each other, “Why didn’t we do this when we first moved in?”  The windows looked beautiful as did our yard now that we could clearly see it.  And the carpeting in the basement was such an upgrade, and we could have enjoyed it for three + years (how long we owned the house) rather than one month (the time it took to sell and move out of the house – remember it was 2001 not 2010!).

I hear the same sentiment from my clients all the time….  So just keep this in mind as you live in your home.  Don’t wait until you decide to sell your home to do some of these home improvement projects which will bring you joy and satisfaction while you are still living in the house with no plans to sell it.

So now back to Tips for Selling your Home….

1. Keep it simple and reasonable. For example, do not renovate your kitchen and bathrooms before you sell your house so that you can get more money for your house.  You will rarely get your money back, and spending that kind of time, energy and money on a house that you are selling is never worth it – emotionally or financially.  Plus it’s too much of a gamble.  You could pick cherry cabinetry and the buyers who come through your house want white cabinetry so they feel they have to rip out all of the cabinetry to put in what they like. Hence the value they place on the cherry cabinets is not positive but negative.

2. Focus on addressing things that will catch buyers eyes right away. I am talking about things like cracked, peeling paint, broken window seals that fog a window and cracked tiles (if there are many of them) as I mentioned from my story above.  Anything that will catch buyers eyes as they walk through the house should definitely be addressed prior to putting the house on the market. If buyers readily see a plethora of things that are in disrepair or need to be fixed, they will think there is even more disrepair that they can’t see, and it will not leave them with a favorable opinion of your home.

3. Make the house/property sparkle. For instance, do touch-up painting where necessary, clean the windows, mow the lawn and rake the leaves, replace burned-out light bulbs and clean the house thoroughly so that it does sparkle.  I’m also going to mention getting rid of spider webs and any dead mice.  We all know that mice are everywhere – in fact, inspectors joke that it’s rats in the city and mice in the suburbs – but buyers do not want to see them as they are going through your house.  Yuck!

Look at how sparkling these windows and this lawn looks…..

4. De-clutter the house. Think closets/storage space, your home decorations/chachkas and big pieces of furniture.  One thing that is important to buyers is having ample closet space and space to store things.  If all of your closets are chock-a-block full with things falling out of them when you open the door, the buyers’ takeaway will be that your home does not have adequate closet space.  Similarly, if you have filled each room from top to bottom with chackas, the buyers won’t even be able to see the space.  You want the buyers to envision themselves living in your house but if they can’t see the space because there is so much clutter, they won’t be able to do this.  Related to this is moving out huge pieces of furniture.  If you have massive couches and chairs in your living room, for example, it will be hard for buyers to see how large the room is because all they can see is the big furniture.  Move your clutter and large items to the homes of friends or family, and it will make a big difference.

How fabulous these de-cluttered, clean and sparkling rooms look….

Not all of this is mandatory, but following these tips will certainly help to sell your home.  If your home is sparkling and filled with nice, clean space, buyers will have such a positive experience in seeing your home that they will be able to envision it as their own. And this is our goal!

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