Take The Horror Out Of Selling Your Home
Selling a home in today’s market doesn’t have to be scary.
Tough economic times simply mean that home sellers need to do their homework, take an active role in marketing their home and be more creative when it comes to making their home stand out from the other listings.
Here are three tricks to making home selling a treat.
1. Curb appeal Don’t spook your buyer.
“A buyer’s worst nightmare could be seeing multiple commercial style rat traps all along the side of the house,” says Megan Sunahara Tune, Realtor at Prudential Locations.
Buyers scrutinize a home’s exterior condition, as it tells a pretty accurate story of how well the structure has been maintained. If there is junk piled high on the side of the house, dead plants, overgrown lawn, chipped paint, or tattered curtains in the windows, a buyer may not even want to see the inside.
Tune suggests to mow the lawn, pick up after the dog, rake the leaves, trim the trees, clear out the carport, paint the front door, add a new door mat and place a potted plant near the entry.
“Also let your neighbors know you are selling your home and that you are holding your open house next weekend,” says Tune. “They may want to help out as well and clean up their yard too and make the overall street look better for you.”
2. Home staging Make your home as attractive as possible. Buyers will pay thousands of dollars more for a home that is tastefully decorated and appears in ready-to-move-in condition.
“Inside the home, turnoffs include horrible odors,” says Tune. “Pet smells or too much air freshener, clutter, collections of odds and ends, stained carpets, dead geckos or roaches on the floor, or a bucket under the kitchen sink or stains on the ceiling are frightful.”
Make sure the house is clean.
“Prospective buyers want to be able to picture themselves living in the home,” Tune adds. “If you think about it, nobody pictures themselves in a home with dirty bathrooms, greasy kitchen floors or messy bedrooms. Think clean, bright, fresh and spotless.”
Tune recommends buying fresh new matching towels for the bathrooms, a new shower curtain, and fresh flowers around the home.
3. Setting a sales price Pricing a property correctly is an essential part of maximizing returns when you sell a home.
“If your home is not priced competitively for the current market and is priced too high, people looking in that price range may reject your home in favor of the other larger homes priced correctly in that range,” says Tune. “Conversely, people who might love your house and should be looking at it won’t even see it because it is listed in a price that is over their heads.”
Do the research. Know what similar homes in
your neighborhood are selling for and understand that it is the buyer who will determine the selling price.
“It is important that you realize that your selling price is determined by the current market and not by what you have to get out of it,” reminds Tune.
The devil is definitely in the details and sellers have a lot of input as to how they approach the process. Experienced Realtors have seen the horror on buyer’s faces when they see something that makes them turn around and walk out of a home and on to another. They know what works and what does-n’t. In this market, more than ever, a Realtor’s advice can protect you from the demons that haunt stagnant listings.
And what about graveyards? Tune says that, if you’re not too superstitious, selling a home with a cemetery nearby can even be a plus.
“It could mean that it would be fairly quiet and usually well kept,” she says. “No noisy neighbors. Some would actually prefer living next to a cemetery than a school, a busy street or an airport.”
Happy Halloween!
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