9 Inexpensive Ways To Get Your Home Ready To Sell

Ways To Get Your House Ready To Sell

If your home is ready to sell, you can attract more buyers and get more offers. But, if you have a limited budget, preparing your home could seem difficult. Of course, you want to get the best home price, but can you really prepare without the budget?

Fortunately, there are plenty of inexpensive ways to make your house more appealing to potential buyers. Let's take a look.

Home sales expert Bill Gassett of Maximum Real Estate Exposure?offered excellent insights into how sellers can make valuable improvements without spending a fortune.

I recommend two things to home sellers on a budget: professional cleaning and paint. There aren't any things that will improve the presentation more. What is vital to remember is that you want buyers to be able to picture themselves living in the home. This is challenging when the house is dirty or the buyer looks at walls with out-of-date color schemes.

You can completely change the appearance of a property in just a few days. Once these two tasks are complete, I would ask a real estate agent their opinion on what should stay and go in the home. Decluttering is another crucial aspect of home sales that should never be overlooked.

All of these things can be grouped into staging a home. From many years of experience selling homes, I have found that owners who spend money on improving the home's appearance sell quickly and for much more money.

Deep Cleaning

Buyers want to imagine themselves living in the space, and who wants to live in a dirty home? Even if you keep your house very clean, it is easy to overlook stains and other marks when you see them every day.

In particular, deep clean the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the carpets to ensure your home looks its best. You can carry out these tasks yourself or hire a professional if your budget allows.

The home should be sparkling clean inside and out to give you the best chance of finding a buyer. If you have pets, there could be unpleasant odors that you need to deal with as well. Once you have done the deep clean, you must maintain this until the home is sold.

Decluttering Your Home

You want potential buyers to imagine themselves living in your home. But if your home is filled with possessions cluttering the spaces, it will be more difficult for buyers to see themselves living there. With many items around the home, it will look smaller and distract potential buyers from what the property offers.

When you move you will have to pack anyway, so start early and put all the items cluttering the home in boxes. You could store these in your garage or you might need to rent a storage unit for a few months. While you might have storage spaces within the home, they shouldn't look cluttered or packed with moving boxes.?

Removing everything from your home that isn't necessary for your day-to-day living will improve your chances of finding a buyer. While this can feel inconvenient, it will help best show your home to buyers.

Staging

With as many unnecessary items removed from your home as possible, you have space to stage the rooms. Staging is a way of preparing your home to make it appeal to buyers. Staged homes will look better in the listing photos, and help attract more interest from buyers. It's a cost-effective step you can take to improve your chances of selling at the best price.

While you can hire a professional home stager, you can do it yourself if you are on a budget. With your home already clean and decluttered, you should also depersonalize. Remove family photos and mementos, and remember to put away clothes and toiletries that could remind buyers that someone else lives in the home.

It is better to define the purpose of each room when staging. You could turn a basement into an entertainment space, an alcove into a reading area, or a spare bedroom into a study using appropriate furniture. Though the buyer may not use that space for the same purpose, it shows that these areas are usable and have potential.

The furniture you use to define the space shouldn't be too large for the room, making it look small. Instead, the furniture should help make the room seem spacious and inviting. If you don't already have the right furniture it is possible to rent items to help stage your home better.

Accessories can add color to an otherwise plain room. Consider buying some colorful pillows to add interest and appeal. Selectively adding plants and opening windows can make the home seem fresh. Flowers and fragrant candles can add final touches just before buyers visit.

Curb Appeal

You want to create a good first impression as soon as the prospective buyer visits your home. Tidying up your front yard, planting flowers, adding some planters, repainting the front door, and buying a new doormat can make a big difference to visitors’ first impression.

Instead of repainting the exterior, power washing the walls can renew the look of your home without the expense. Power washing the walkway can also make a considerable difference to the curb appeal.

Keeping your front yard tidy doesn't cost anything, any other tasks are fairly inexpensive too. Despite this, don't underestimate how powerful creating the right first impression is.

Repainting

If it's been a long time since some of your rooms had a fresh coat of paint, repainting might be the best option. However, you may be able to get away with only a quick touch-up rather than dealing with the whole room. Repainting a prominent feature within the room can dramatically improve the overall appearance and is a cheap and easy option to make the home more appealing.

Small Upgrades

There are some small and inexpensive changes you can make that will have a disproportionate impact on the appearance of your home. Upgrading the kitchen cabinets is an expensive option that might not be to the taste of buyers, but just replacing the knobs can make a significant difference at a fraction of the cost.

Replacing faucets and shower heads can rejuvenate a tired-looking bathroom at a low cost. Replacing light fixtures is another small upgrade that can be a very cost-effective improvement to the appearance of your home.

Hiring a Handyman

Buyers will notice small defects when they walk around your home, and if it's only a few it probably won't make much difference. However, if they find a lot of small things wrong in your home, these small problems could become a big problem.

If you know many small jobs need fixing around your home, consider hiring a handyman for the day if you don't enjoy DIY. The handyman can tackle multiple small jobs in one day to improve how easy it is to sell your home.

Timing

Sometimes changes in your life dictate when you need to sell your house, but with some planning, you can avoid rushing your preparations for listing.

If you don't have an ideal listing date, you should start by picking one. While it might be popular to choose a date between April and June, this will mean you have more competition. Listing your home earlier in the year could mean it sells for more.

Once you have your listing date, you should start preparing your home six weeks before. This gives you time to complete repainting jobs and other tasks before buyers see your home.?

A month before listing you can begin packing the stuff you don't need in your day-to-day life. Removing these items will help you declutter, making it easier to do a deep clean.

You should begin staging the rooms of your home ready for the pictures at least a week before listing. With better pictures, it will be easier to attract home buyers, you just need to keep a clean well-maintained home throughout the process.?

Choosing the Right Real Estate Agent

When selling your home, choosing the right real estate agent to represent your interests can make a big difference. You want to find a real estate agent who is experienced and knows what sells homes in your local market.

They should have the skills to list your home so it attracts the right buyer. An experienced agent should be able to advise you on what you can do to help sell your home.

While you could hire the first real estate agent you meet, if you do some research you will get a better idea of how well they do their job. Client testimonials can help you find an agent who puts in extra work to help sellers achieve better prices.

Asking a Realtor about their experience of the local market and how they will help sell your home will give you a better idea of whether you should hire them. If they don't have a plan for marketing your home that includes preparing to sell, there are probably better options.

Final Thoughts On How To Get Your House Ready to Sell

Getting your home ready to sell needn’t be expensive. These simple and inexpensive tips could produce a great return on investment for relatively little effort. Getting your home ready to sell should make it appeal to more buyers, leading to more offers that could increase the price you sell for.

Meet the author: The insightful piece, ‘Inexpensive Ways To Get Your Home Sold Faster’, is the brainchild of Luke Skar, owner of MadisonMortgageGuys.com. As the mastermind behind their social media presence, Luke’s responsibility is to curate fresh and engaging content across all social platforms, driving traffic and generating new business opportunities through his website.

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