So you’ve decided to sell your home and you’re busy checking off your to-do list while preparing for the sale. Whether you’re cleaning and staging the property, getting in touch with your real estate team about details, or contacting local professionals to help you through the process, you’re certainly dealing with a lot of tasks.
But before you get to that step, you may wonder what are the best ways to get the home ready for sale. Below, we’ve collected everything you need to know with expert tips on preparing your home for sale.
Declutter and de-personalize
The last thing a potential homebuyer wants to see when they enter the house for the first time is a lot of your personal items, artwork, and family heirlooms. In general, buyers prefer to have a somewhat empty canvas greet them when touring a house for sale. This makes it easier for them to imagine what life would look like for them and their family in the home rather than what it was like for you. This is the aim of de-personalizing a property.
Before you and your agent host your first open house or take photographs of the home, try to de-personalize the high-traffic areas by removing all the personal photos, art, toys, and objects. While you’re at it, declutter these same spaces and clear off all tables, bookshelves, and counters. Swap out busily decorated parts of the house with a single accent piece, floral arrangement, or pop of color.
Have a cleaning strategy
Looking at your house as a whole before you sell, it may seem like quite a task to clean the property adequately. The best way to approach cleaning and sanitizing the home for listing photos and tour guests is to break up all your responsibilities into steps. Of course, you can hire a professional to help you complete the cleaning (online estimates calculate that the average cost for this help will be between $150 and $250). But you can do it all yourself if you draft a cleaning strategy early on. Here are some common ways to break up all your tasks:
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Look over all the different materials in the home and on surfaces you plan to clean and ensure that you purchase the right solvents to deal with each
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Determine the order of rooms you want to clean, starting with the rooms that have the highest number of visitors
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Tackle the cleaning one room at a time before moving on to the next task
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Clean and deodorize floors and carpets last
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Don’t forget to clean commonly overlooked elements of the home, including the garbage disposal, clogged drains, faucets, weather stripping, and grout
Perfect your home staging
The next step to prepare your Springboro home for sale is to get the interior and exterior ready for photographers. This part of the process is called home staging, a growing industry in the luxury real estate market. The easiest solution is to hire a local professional home stager or staging company, but homeowners can achieve high-end results themselves by following a few basic principles. Here are some staging tips:
- Offset neutral-colored rooms with an accent piece like a vase or large painting
- Contrast differing textures and building materials like metallic lighting fixtures and hardware, glass or crystal chandeliers, and wood paneling
- Simplify table settings in the dining room and living room by placing a few art books, bouquets, or patterned textiles on flat surfaces
- Clear counters in the kitchen and home office
- Open the majority of your curtains to allow the maximum amount of light into ground floor rooms
- Take listing photos in the afternoon, early evening, or when the sun is partially cloud-covered to reduce glare
- Clear the front-facing facade of the home and consider planting fresh greenery around the perimeter of the yard to establish a strong visual border
Make a few last-minute upgrades
It’s the perfect time to plan some minimal home improvement projects while you’re preparing to sell your house. But it’s important to understand which parts of the home will bring in a high return on investment (ROI) if you do make some upgrades. For example, the kitchen is often the first room prospective buyers will look to for modern appliances and a fashionable design. Installing a fresh backsplash, new cabinets, or stainless steel hardware are all good ways to ensure that your last-minute upgrades get noticed by motivated buyers.
The HVAC system in your home is another element of the property that will bring in a healthy ROI if you choose to install a brand-new, energy-efficient model before selling. Nearly 48% of real estate agents polled in 2020 reported that buyers today place a very high value on living with green appliances, so you’ll do yourself a lot of good making these kinds of upgrades.
Finally, a last tip is to consider a repaint of select rooms in the home. The modern opinion is that neutral color schemes are best and will attract the widest variety of buyers. Spend your time repainting the bathroom in tones that emphasize cleanliness. The bedroom is best reserved for darker, cooler wall paints, while the rooms you entertain in are better served by warm tones that encourage conversation and energy.
Get in touch with a local real estate agent today
With that, we’ve come to the end of our insider’s guide to preparing your house for sale. In addition to the above tips, we want to close out this piece with a rapid-fire list of some final options you can turn to when dealing with homes for sale in Waynesville, Ohio, and elsewhere in the country:
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Boost curb appeal by trimming the grass, sealing any cracks in the driveway and sidewalk, and repainting the front door in an eye-catching color
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Replace aged flooring with modern options in hardwoods like oak, maple, or walnut
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Hire a qualified concierge service to manage minor repairs, decluttering, hardware replacement, pressure washing, and much more
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Investing in short-term, off-site storage to house your extra furniture and goods during the sale
If you have any questions or comments to share, reach out to your local realtor today. Contact Juliet Wenzler for more information.
