Getting Your Home Ready for a Spring Sale
/Spring will be here soon and with it comes that magical season of home selling and buying. Spring is the time of year that more homes trade hands and when the prices for the year make their move. If you are planning to join in this season, here are some things you can do to get your home ready to look its best.
1. Clean Up That Curb Appeal
Spend some time cleaning out and mulching your flower beds. Get a spring fertilizer on the lawn to start greening it up. Sweep all your sidewalks and driveway. If it's early spring you won't have a lot of blooms in your yard quite yet. Consider getting some potted plants for your walkway or front porch.
2. Deep Clean Inside the Home
Deep cleaning isn't fun, but it's well worth your time. When a buyer comes into your house and sees old dirt on your blinds and outlet plate covers and baseboards it makes the home feel neglected. We want buyers to walk into a sparkling clean house that feels like it's worth every penny of it's price.
3. Fix Broken Things
Another way your house can feel neglected is the little things that don't quite work, but you never got around to fixing. Take some time to fix leaky faucets and pipes, oil squeaky doors and tighten up their hinges. Fix door locks that don't work, nonfunctional light switches and broken windows. Get the furnace and a/c tuned up and dust them off. Include the water heater too. Make your home run like a well oiled machine. Little things like this can add up in a buyers mind as he walks through or during the home inspection.
4. Declutter
As you're cleaning the home take some time to declutter too. Clean out and rearrange your closets to make them look more spacious. File the pile of paperwork you haven't quite made the time for yet. Put away extra toys that don't get played with often. As we live in our homes we collect things and the more we collect the more we have a tendency to let clutter pile up and make our homes feel smaller. Take this opportunity to scale down and back and put things away. It will make your home much more appealing to buyers.
5. Renovate?
Sometimes renovating parts of your home prior to a sale makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Most improvements you make to a home will net you less than 100% of your investment. The exception to this rule is painting, flooring & cleaning. Spending money on those items typically return over 100% of your money. When you're trying to decide if putting in new kitchen cabinets in worth the expense, give me a call. As a professional I can come in and walk through the home with you to help determine which areas are worth your time and money and which can be skipped.
I can also come out and talk to you about pricing and timelines and help with your game plan. It's one of the things I do best!
