This is a very good time to sell your house for a lot of reasons. The main reason is that there is low inventory for available properties and sellers are at an advantage. This situation is commonly referred to as a ‘sellers market’. There are currently more buyers than available homes for sale, which creates competition among buyers to get the seller to accept their offer.
If you have ever sold a house, then you know that there are many preparations to complete in order to put your house on the market. Several years ago, I wrote a post called How to Clear Out a Home to Sell After a Death, click on the link to check it out. This post has some of the same info as well as other things that need to be addressed to prepare your house for sale.
Decluttering, or downsizing is the first step in the process to sell your house. A clutter-free house allows potential buyers to really see all the available space, and provides a sense of placement for how their furniture and other things will fit. Less is better should be the mantra for this first step. If you need to temporarily store some furniture to avoid the look of a cluttered room, then go for it.
There are many other reasons that you will benefit from a good purge to sell your house. One of them is that it’s a liberating feeling when you remove items from your home, whether you sell them, donate them, recycle them, or trash the items that have lived their useful lives. I won’t go into the other reasons, but I’m sure you will realize the benefits along the way.
De-personalize your home. This means to remove personal items unique to you and your family, such as photos, certificates of accomplishments, or awards. This allows potential buyers to envision your home as their own.
Do some investigation to see what types of obvious repairs are needed, and then make those repairs as part of the preparations to sell your house. You may want to have your house inspected to understand building codes in your municipality. This is sort of a preventative measure to ensure you make necessary repairs to bring it up to code, that you didn’t know about that you will have to make to sell your house.
If your house hasn’t been updated in quite a while, seek advice from a qualified professional for inexpensive updates, and then act on them. Realtors are a good resource to help you with this aspect. Something as simple as a fresh coat of paint goes a long way to update or freshen up the look to present your house in its best light.
There is a process to pretty much everything. The idea is to present your home in its best light and that means having all your ducks in a row. If you skip the steps mentioned above, you run the risk of losing a quick sale for top dollar, and you don’t want that to happen.
