Preparing Your Home for a Buyer
Great news - it’s time to sell your home, now the hard work begins! If you want to sell your home quickly and get the asking price you desire, it’s a good idea to make some changes. These changes can be small or significant depending on your budget, but they all make a difference.
Clean the property
Most people like a clean property to live in, even if this isn’t always easy to achieve. Over time it can be hard to keep a property spick and span over time, and your living standard starts to slip. But when it comes to selling the property, cleanliness is one thing you have to pay attention to.
A buyer who comes to visit your home will be put off by dirt and grime, which can affect the valuations of your home as well as your chances of selling it quickly. But, on the other hand, when buyers walk into a freshly cleaned property, they can start to imagine living there.
Remove any clutter
The same goes for clutter! Clutter includes boxes that have yet to be disposed of, junk mail, magazines, kid’s toys, and anything else that has been temporarily cast aside. Needless to say, this isn’t going to give the best impression to potential buyers coming to view the property.
While it might not seem like an issue, it can make a big difference, especially to the perception of buyers who want to imagine themselves living there. Of course, your property might sell anyway because of its location, but it will sell faster and for a better price with less clutter.
De-personalize the property
Once again, when you’re selling a property, you want to try to sell the dream! It’s harder for buyers to imagine themselves in the home if you have loads of family pictures hanging up and personal items lying around. So try to make the place as neutral as you possibly can.
When a buyer walks around the property, you want them to imagine the possibilities of the place for them, so it’s best to take down any family pictures and paint the walls a neutral color. It’s also good to minimize the furniture and use interior decoration that suits a broad audience.
Fix up the place
Chances are you have lots of little fixes to make to your home, things like leaking pipes and shaky door handles. It can be tempting to sell the property and let someone else take care of things, but this might be a missed opportunity to sell the home faster and get a better price.
When you carry out all the small fixes on your property, you can use these as a selling point. All you have to do is add the changes you’ve made to the property description page; when people see you’ve fixed the place up, it gives them more confidence in the property overall.
Lightness and brightness
Nobody likes a dark and dingy home, at least people viewing a property for the first time don’t. They want to see a potential new home, somewhere that has a lot of natural light and nice views of the surrounding landscape. This isn’t possible if you close the blinds and curtains.
The good news is it’s daily easy to make your home lighter and brighter. First, consider changing the curtains to lighter ones or removing them altogether, so the light spills during the day. And blinds are useful when you’re living in a home, but not when you’re selling one.
Home improvements
The small things make a difference to how quickly you sell your home, but not necessarily to the price you get for it. But there is another way, make some home improvements. Home improvements are a great way to add some extra value to your home and get a better price.
If you decide to take on some pre-sale home improvement projects, make one of the areas the kitchen. The kitchen is still the most saleable asset, and if you have a new kitchen, all the better. Also, consider the exterior of your home; wood siding gives the property a market advantage.
Perfect pictures online
The last thing you need if you want to sell your home quickly and get your asking price is to put perfect pictures online. This is where your sales pitch begins; too often, sellers make the mistake of putting sub-standard pictures online and limiting the number of potential viewers.
There are best practices when it comes to taking the perfect pictures for an estate agent’s website. First, aim to get the majority of the room in the picture, so stand in a corner and kneel down; this gives you the best angle. Remember to adhere to the advice above for pictures too.
