Whether you have a home that has been in your family for many generations, or if you just bought a cute starter home and are moving onto the next stage in your life, letting go of your home can be an emotional thing. Selling your property can cause a lot of emotional stress, but it can also be stressful to get your home ready to sell. There are a lot of steps that you have to take to get your house ready to put on the market in order to gain any interest from people who might want to buy your house and pay a fair price for it.
Below are some things you can do to get things ready. It can be things like finding improvements that need to be made, installing indoor window shutters, having professional pictures taken, getting rid of the clutter, and other things that will help increase the value of your home and get you a pleasant listing price. Below are some tips to follow to help get your home ready to put it on the market.
Look at the market before you decide to sell
The home market fluctuates on a regular basis which means that houses sell at some time of the year better than they do at other times of the year. Before you decide to put your house up on the market, do your own research or get with a real estate agent and look at the current market. If it is not a good market to sell in, you can simply wait a few months, if at all possible, until the market goes back up and you can get a better price for your house.
Make repairs that need to be done
Your house will not pass inspection or be able to be sold if there are any structural issues wrong with it. Before putting your home on the market, have your home evaluated and get any issues taken care of like leaking pipes, cracked window frames, foundation issues, roofing problems, etc. Once these things are fixed the value of your home goes up and can be sold again.
Declutter the house
When people start to look at a new house, one of the biggest things that they look for is bedrooms that are larger than what they currently have. In order to impress people that are looking at your house, clean out as much stuff that you can out of the rooms; the less that you have in your rooms the bigger they will appear. If you declutter and clean out all of your rooms and find that you have nowhere to put your extra stuff, consider renting a temporary storage space so that you can store what you want to keep without keeping it in your home. Don’t make the rooms completely empty, but leave basic furniture in there so people looking to buy the house can imagine what the house will look like when they fill it with their own furniture.
Focus on what your house looks like from the street
As you know, first impressions are very important. When people drive up to your house, if the first thing they see is a drabby house with peeling paint and overgrown grass and weeds, they will more than likely turn the other way and never come back. Make sure that people are impressed when they pull up to your house for the first time by taking care of your lawn, investing in some pretty plants, refreshing your front door, power washing the driveway and house, etc. These small steps can make a huge difference in how people perceive your house and they will be as impressed with the outside as they are the inside.
Once you get your home ready to put on the market, it is then time to talk with your agent and figure out a fair, yet competitive asking price for your house based on the market and the area you live in. Your house will then go on the market and your agent will take over from there and get it sold for you. In the meantime, get you and your family ready to move! Start packing things away and looking for a new home that will be the perfect place for the next chapter of your life to begin.
