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Preparing your Home for Sale
If you’re thinking of listing your property, one thing that might be holding you
back is concern about preparing your home for sale. You may be wondering
how much work there will be. Is it going to take a couple of months? A couple
of weeks? A few days?
That, of course, depends on the state of your property.
However, regardless of how close your home is to “show time” ready, there is
plenty you can do to reduce how long that preparation takes. Consider these
ideas:
• Sell stuff online. The less cluttered your home seems to buyers, the better it
will show. So, make a list of items you want to sell, and then list them on one
of the many local online market websites. Price items fairly and, chances
are, you’ll get rid of everything in a day or two.
• Have a repair day. Go through your home and make a list of everything
that needs to be fixed. Then, schedule repair people to all come on the
same day. Voila! In one day, all needed repairs (or, at least, most of them)
are done.
• Get staging advice. Instead of guessing at what changes you need to make
around your home to make it look its best, get expert staging advice. You’ll
find out exactly what the experts suggest you do, and you’ll save a lot of
time and money. (By the way, I can provide you with that advice too.)
• Ask before making big improvements. Are you planning to convert a wood
burning fireplace into a gas unit to help sell your home? Before doing any
big improvements or renovations like that, talk to me. You don’t want to
spend thousands of dollars on an unnecessary project.
• Hire help. You don’t have to do everything on your own. Get the help you
need. For example, hire a painter, a cleaner, and/or a junk removal service.
Those will significantly shorten the time it takes to prepare your home for
sale and save you a lot of work. Also, the costs of those professionals may
be off-set by the increase in the sale price of your home.
Bottomline: Preparing your home doesn’t need to be overwhelming and time consuming.
Contact me for more ideas to help get your home ready for sale.
What if your Ideal Home Isn’t Available?
What if your Ideal Home Isn’t Available?
Imagine you’re looking for a new home. You have a list of all the features you want, just like you would have a grocery shopping list. However, when you explore the homes currently on the market, none meets all your criteria.
What do you do? You have a few good options.
First, you can take a second look at your list. Does your new home need every single feature on it? Are there one or two features you can do without? For example, can you settle for a smaller kitchen assuming the property has everything else you want?
Often, buying a home that’s close to perfect is perfect enough.
Second, consider what features you might be able to add to a home later, by way of a renovation or other improvement. If a property doesn’t have a finished basement, for example, you might be able to get that done down the road. Indeed, there are probably many features you can add later to an otherwise desirable property.
Finally, consider the current level of activity in the local real estate market. Is it likely that a lot of new homes will be coming on the market soon? If so, your perfect home may come up on the market within the next few weeks.
Maybe even tomorrow!
In that situation, make sure you arrange to get immediate alerts for newly listed homes that meet your criteria. You’ll want to jump on each new opportunity before other buyers learn of the listing.
The good news is, in most cases you should be able to find and buy a great home, with most — if not all — of the features you want.
