You’ve gone thru the angst deciding whether or not to sell, settled on the price you should ask and even done some home repair fix up’s.
Staging Your Home to Sell, Get Ready… Now it’s Show Time. Essentially during the marketing & showing stage of selling your house it belongs to your Realtor and your responsibility is to keep everything super sparkling clean, picked up & ready for showings at the drop of a hat. Yes, it’s really inconvenient & disruptive, but an essential part of successfully marketing your house to sell.
Unless you’ve decided on what we call, “Event Pricing”, the process will be a marathon, not a sprint to closing. Here are a few simple tricks to make the process go easier on you & the family.
1.) Rent a Storage Unit – One of the keys to keeping your home “Show Ready”, is clutter free spaces. If your closets, cupboards & garage are disorganized & crammed full, get organized now. Get rid of 1/3 of your stuff, everything can fall into one of four categories. Sell, Donate, Throw Away, Pack & Store. Remove what you don’t use every day, store them until you move – one of the biggest complaint’s we hear from potential buyer’s, there isn’t enough room for my stuff! If a buyer sees disorganized & stuffed closets & cabinets they know there won’t be room for their things either. A clutter free home doesn’t just look more spacious, it’s also a lot easier to keep clean.
2.) Hire a Housekeeper – If you don’t already have a weekly housekeeper, save yourself a lot of headaches & hire one to come in on a weekly basis to keep everything sparkling clean.
3.) Pick up the Night Before – it takes a team effort, get a buy-in from each member of the family to help keep the house in show condition. Each night before you hit the sack, do a quick once around in the house. Put everything away, wipe counters, throw a load of laundry in the washer, fold & put away the clothes from the dryer before going to bed; that way the next morning you just have to make the bed and do an easy clean up in the Bathrooms & Kitchen before you head out for the day.
4.) Let the Light Shine In – Before showings, open all the blinds and turn on all the accent lights. Use up-lighters if you have a dark corner. Homes that are light and bright appear larger and more inviting. If you have ceiling fans, turn them all on low. Light & Bright is a strong selling feature.
5.) Use Caddy’s- Keep all of your bathroom personal items in a caddy & store inside one of your cabinets. They work great in the Kitchen too. This makes it easy to pull out what you need when you’re getting ready in the morning & super easy to throw everything back in the caddy and slip it back in the cupboard when you leave.
For more tips on how to keep your home “Show Ready”, drop us a line, we’re happy to help! Cathi(at)DesertAreaHomeFinder(dotted)com