How to Prepare Your Home For Sale

Sep 21, 2015

When it’s time to put your house on the market, ensure you’re maximizing your profits by following these smart real estate tips. Real estate agents can help with the home sale or you can opt to go the FSBO (for sale by owner) route.

Whether you’re using a real estate agent or doing it FSBO, the rules are the same. Make your house the property that buyers are looking for and are willing to pay top dollar to own.

Clean And Repair

Your home sale is dependent on its appeal to potential buyers. Doing minor repairs and a thorough cleaning is a first step. Do all those little things you’ve been putting off. Do that deep cleaning that makes your house shine like a model home.

De-Clutter And Depersonalize

Speaking of model homes, staging your home and preparing it for viewing are important real estate tips. Remove all clutter and personal items as this will allow potential buyers to visualize their things in your home.

View this as just really getting a head start on that onerous task of packing. It’s also a great time to weed out unneeded items for a yard sale or as donations.

Stage Your Home

Even after you’ve de-cluttered and removed personalized items from your home, you probably still have too much stuff. This is when it’s time to stage your home. If you’re using the for sale by owner method, you don’t have an agent to advise you. Minimize your home’s contents and then minimize again.

If necessary, rent storage space so you can remove large pieces of furniture from your home. You want your home to appear as spacious as possible and that’s not possible with rooms crammed with furniture.

Make sure closets, cabinets and drawers are perfectly arranged with a minimum of items, and your garage is free of all the things you’ve been storing there.

Include the entire family in this exercise and insist that every member is responsible for maintaining your home’s new, pristine appearance. Your smart selling preparations are sure to make a positive impact on the speed of the sale and the final selling price of your home.