11 Tips On Preparing Your Home On The Market

Posted by Wendy Poltorek // May 11, 2022 // Blog / Cleveland / Featured / Real Estate Investment / Selling Your House Fast // Declutter the home / Find a listing agent / Stage your home / things to do before you sell your home

Not sure how to get your house ready to sell? Fortunately, there are steps you can take before putting your home on the market. This will increase your chances of receiving a solid offer from a buyer. With the right tips, you can be on the right track toward successful open houses and showings with a home that shines for potential buyers!
Here are 11 things to do before you sell your home.

Research your local housing market. First and foremost, make sure to do your homework on the value of your home. Start by researching the local housing market. Take a look at comparable sales in your neighborhood to figure out the appropriate listing price for your home. Pay attention to the various comps’ square footage, features and location. Finally, think about how they compare to your home.
Find a listing agent. Enlisting a professional real estate agent to list your home is highly recommended. When interviewing a listing agent, be sure to ask about their experience in your neighborhood, connections to potential buyers and social media expertise. This agent should be able to give you a thoroughly laid out plan for how they are going to sell your home.
Buy more light bulbs. Go ahead and stock up on light bulbs. When showing your house to potential buyers, all light fixtures and lamps will need to be turned on. For this reason, it’s important that all lights in your home have working light bulbs.
Give your house a deep clean. First impressions mean a lot. So don’t let foul smells, dirty floors or dusty surfaces make a bad one on a potential buyer. Before listing your home (and throughout the selling process), give your home a deep clean. This means cleaning toilets, wiping down surfaces, mopping floors, cleaning rugs and scrubbing bathrooms.
Declutter the home. Decluttering and organizing your space will go a long way in appealing to potential buyers. When a home is clutter-free, buyers are able to focus on the actual home instead of on the junk, knick knacks and overflowing closets.
Call a handyman. When selling a house, you should have your handyman on speed dial. Make sure anything and everything that needs to be fixed (think: locks, hardware, leaky faucets, running toilets, cracks in the walls, broken appliances, squeaky doors, etc) has been taken care of before listing a home. Otherwise, buyers may think your home hasn’t been well taken care of, which can be a turn-off for many.
Paint the walls. Now’s the time to re-paint your home. Start by painting over those bright orange and green walls with neutral colors. Stick to whites, light grays, light beiges, and “greige” wall colors. These shades will make your home appear bigger, brighter and more welcoming.
Stage your home. According to multiple studies, staging a home really can help it sell faster and for more money. Fortunately, staging your home’s interior is easy and affordable. Don’t forget to also spruce up your home’s curb appeal when staging the home. After all, the outside of the home is the first thing potential buyers will see when they pull up for a showing. So make sure that the grass is cut, the yard is landscaped and the knick knacks are gone.
Hire a professional photographer. Given that many potential buyers search for homes online, it’s crucial to include high quality, professional photos in your online listing. Without excellent high resolution images, potential buyers may (sadly) overlook your home. So before putting it on the market, go ahead and hire a professional photographer to snap photos of your clean and staged abode.
Rent a storage unit. Selling a home successfully will involve some decluttering and purging of your belongings. For this reason, go ahead and rent a temporary storage unit before selling your home. Having a self-storage unit nearby will give you somewhere to temporarily place all of your extra stuff when staging and showing the home.
Depersonalize your home. When selling a home, you want to strike the perfect balance between depersonalization and creating a warm, welcoming home. This means putting away the majority of framed photos, bulletin boards and personal items throughout the home. Leave a few nice, framed photos around the house to make the home appear more inviting to viewers.