Here are the top 10 things that you might not think about (but should) before you get ready to put your house on the market.
- Make sure that you’ve cleaned and tidied up before you leave the house in the morning. If you’ve got showings (or potentially might have showings) getting those crumbs off the counter, making sure all the toilets are flushed, etc. Those little things go a long way into making your home go from really appealing to “ew, you wouldn’t believe the house that we saw today”.
- Make sure that you have something to do with your pets when your home is being shown. Don’t leave your dog or cat in a space and then expect the buyers to either not be afraid of them or do something with them (don’t let the dog out, don’t let the cat out, etc). When you ask people to do chores, it becomes less appealing and then they’re very distracted thinking “Oh my gosh, am I gonna let the cat out? Did I let the cat out? Where’s the cat?” They’re not looking at your house, they’re looking for your cat because you’ve told them that that’s what they need to do.
- You don’t always have to have your closets impeccably clean, but 110% people will open your closets. So make sure you’re getting stuff off the floor, and that the closets are at least well organized and not packed full of stuff. When people see your home packed full of stuff, they immediately think, “Gosh, I have this much stuff and they are bursting at the seams. Where am I going to put my stuff?”. That’s not what you want buyers thinking when they’re looking at your home.
- Put all your cleaning materials away. When you leave things like sponges, sprays, etc. out it just looks unfinished.
- Put all your medicines and valuables away, or better yet, take them with you. You don’t know who’s coming into your house and while nobody’s going to be able to come in and tour without having an agent, you don’t know who the people are.
- Your refrigerator. Maybe you’re going to take it with you, maybe you want to leave it but people are still going to open it. So if it looks filthy, it’s going to give an impression of your whole house. So make sure your fridge is clean and that it doesn’t smell because that sort of thing does leave an impression.
- People are probably going to use your bathroom. It would be great if they didn’t, but often they will. If people are looking at four or five houses in a day, they might have to go and if you’re trying to sell your house, you don’t want them saying “I can’t look at this, I have to go to the McDonald’s to use the bathroom”. You want them to keep looking at your house.
- Make sure that your front door/entrance area is neat and tidy on the outside. Have a fresh doormat, make sure there are no cobwebs, etc. Trust me, in the Richmond area, if you walk away after cleaning cobwebs, there’s already a spider doing a new cobweb before you come back. So that’s something you need to do all the time. It’s not a do it before you put your house on the market and then leave it alone. Give it a look every day as long as your home is on the market and make sure that it’s swept off and it looks neat. As we always say, you want people to visualize themselves coming into their (future) home, not yours. The more clues that it’s yours, the less they’re getting attached and engaged with your home and the idea of it being theirs.
- Keep your grass mowed and lawn care, neat and tidy. It doesn’t have to be a fancy European garden-style situation. It just needs to be mowed, trimmed, neat, clean. If you’ve got a lot of leaves, get them up because nobody wants to look at a house and all they see is work. Because it’s all they see is work, they are not buying your house.
- Get a friend, your realtor, or somebody to come through before you go on the market, as well as periodically while you’re on the market, and give it a once over to tell you if you have weird smells. Do you need to freshen something up, clean it up, or straighten it up? Get somebody that has a more objective vision and viewpoint that can give you an honest assessment of how your home shows to people, and make sure that your agent is getting feedback from the people who come to take a look at your house because that’s going to make a big difference.
The overall impression and the overall way your home appears is what’s going to sell or not sell it. If you have any questions about ways to get your particular home ready, or maybe you are just starting to think about getting your home on the market and you want to know what you need to do, give me a call. I’d love to talk to you and help you make that little checklist that’s unique to your home and where you want to be.
