Preparing your home is an important part of the home selling process. When listing a home on the market, we at Conna O’Donovan Real Estate aim to help our sellers understand the importance of emphasizing the compelling features and exhibiting a property’s potential to buyers. Not to be taken lightly, a well staged, cleaned, and repaired home can make all the difference when first putting it on the market. Below you will find the main steps to preparing a home all sellers should take into account. Use these to create a great first impression and make your house appealing to buyers.
1. Stage Your Home
Staging a home involves highlighting a home’s strengths, downplaying its weaknesses, and appealing to the greatest number of prospective buyers. An easy way to begin is to first remove all clutter. Make sure you get rid of excessive personal items, to give your home a welcoming feel that buyers can relate to. We recommend that you group the furniture to make rooms feel larger and easier to use. Also, lighting is an important consideration, and should make you home look warm and comfortable. Tend towards neutral tones as well, which will be more palatable to a larger audience. This is just a taste of the many things we consider when staging your home for sale, but don’t get overwhelmed! Our in-house Staging Director would be happy to stop in for a free consultation and estimate.
2. Give it a Deep Clean
Equally important to staging is making sure your home is as clean as can be. No one wants a home with dirt, grime, and smells throughout the space. Be sure to remember to clean all windows, dust, sweep, and vacuum each room, and make the kitchen and bathrooms sparkly clean. If you’d like to hire it out, we can recommend some great cleaning services in the area on our Preferred Vendor’s page. They will go the extra mile if needed to really get your home clean, and our agents at Conna O’Donovan Real Estate will give you the advice you need.
3. Make Minor Repairs
Small repairs are often overlooked by sellers when listing a home, but can make all the difference and are usually easy and inexpensive. Patch up any holes, replace old curtains and bedspreads, fix leaky faucets and broken electrical, and repair anything else that’s broken. Sure, it can take time, but it’s sure to increase the value of your home. Minor improvements and repairs make your home that much more attractive to potential buyers,and keep them enthusiastic about buying your home.
4. Update the Outdoors
You only get a first impression once, and for home sellers, that starts at the front door. Make sure that your landscaping is well kept; with the grasses cut and shrubbery trimmed. Any outdoor cleaning should also be a priority: pressure wash the exterior walls, walkways, and driveway if need be. This is a good time to paint too, if pressure washing isn’t enough. Painters, Landscapers, and Washers our clients appreciated are all available at our Preferred Vendors list. Don’t be afraid to hire out some help!