If you are selling your home, you’ll want to take measures that ensure you sell quickly and for the most money possible. Focusing your energy in the right ways will help you accomplish a successful sale of your home. The idea is to present your home attractively, preemptively remove potential challenges, and increase awareness of your home for sale. Follow these top tips for selling your home and you will be closing escrow in no time.
Top Tips for Selling Your Home
1. Elevate the Exterior
First impressions are everything. When a buyer arrives at your home, the first thing they are going to see is your home’s exterior and your lawn. Make sure your lawn and landscaping are on point. If your curb appeal is lacking, you may want to invest a few hundred dollars to level up your landscaping. Upgrades and additions may include repairing spots of dead grass, trimming bushes, and adding mulch or rocks to plant beds. You will also be well served by pressure washing your driveway and the exterior walls of your home.
2. Declutter
Decluttering your home is all about removing distractions. Buyers want to see your home, not your personal items. Removing personal items will make your home appear more spacious. It also allows buyers to imagine their own personal belongings in the space. The more buyers can imagine themselves living in your home, the better.
The truth is, you are moving anyway, so why not get a headstart on packing your things away? Go ahead and pack away items you don’t need for everyday use. You can store those boxes neatly in your garage or it may make sense to temporarily rent a storage unit.
3. Stage your home.
Once you have packed away most of your personal items, the next step is to set the stage. When buyers enter your home, you want them to see its full potential for use and aesthetics. This can be achieved by arranging furniture to define how space is used. Another staging trick is to reduce the amount and size of furnishings in small spaces to make them seem larger. Add accessories and design elements that are not too specific in style or personal taste.
4. Fresh paint
This may be the top tip for selling your home that garners the most bang for your time and money. A coat of fresh paint on the walls is a good idea for several reasons. Buyers will immediately smell the fresh paint and get a sense of newness and cleanliness. This fresh coat will also cover any scuffs or small imperfections that a buyer may overreact to. In their mind, it will be one less thing that they have to do in order to move in. One more major benefit to painting is that you are able to drastically transform your home interior by updating to a modern or trending color pallet.
5. Make your home smell good.
Foul or overpowering odors in your home will quickly turn off potential buyers. Most homes have a specific smell. Some are good, however, some are not so good. When selling your home, it is crucial to identify these odors and eliminate them. Buyers are extremely turned off by pet odors. If you have pets, do whatever you can to remove or clean anything in your home that smells like them. This could include carpets, rugs, pet bedding, curtains, and furnishings.
Overpowering buyers with fragrances and the smell of cleaning products can also turn off buyers. You want your home to have a neutral smell. A hint of fresh paint smell or cleaning products is good too. Before buyer showings or open houses, open up your windows throughout the house to freshen the air even more.
6. Brighten your space.
Good lighting is so important. There are several simple ways to improve the lighting in your home so that buyers can see it shining bright. Changing light bulbs to LED will greatly improve natural lighting. To let more natural light into your home, pull back curtains, and open any blinds or shutters on the windows. If you have any trees or hedges blocking sunlight from coming in, you should consider trimming them back from the window.
During showings and open houses, uncover all windows and turn on all of the lights in your home. Doing this will brighten things up and make buyers love your home even more.
7. Do a deep cleaning of your home.
Do you see a theme developing here? It’s all about presenting your home at its very best and preemptively addressing common buyer objections. Your home is the product, therefore, it must be presented to the consumer in the very best way possible. Once you have put your home up for sale, consider hiring a small cleaning crew to do a deep cleaning before inviting buyers in. This of course is something you could do yourself, but hiring a cleaning crew will allow you to focus on other aspects of selling your home.
8. Hire a professional photographer
Complete as many of the previous tips as you can and then hire a professional real estate photographer. With your home looking its very best, a pro photographer will produce high-quality photos that show off all the great qualities of your home. These photos will show wide-angle views of smaller rooms allowing more space to be seen. A professional will also increase light exposure in the photos to enhance color and vibrance. The difference between pro and amateur photos is night and day. Marketing your home with amateur photos and videos could lower buyer interest and in-person showings. thus affecting your bottom line.
9. Let the neighborhood know your home is for sale.
Some of the best salespeople that you can employ to help you sell your home are your neighbors. After all, they live there too and likely have friends and family that are interested in moving there also. One of the top ways to let your neighbors know about your intentions to sell is to install a ‘for sale’ in the front yard. Holding an open house specifically for people living in the neighborhood is another great method. Be sure to put out a lot of signage throughout the neighborhood and mail out or hand-deliver invitations to the event.
10. Produce virtual video and 3D tours
This tip for selling your home is more important than ever. The Covid19 pandemic has made ‘in-person’ showings and open houses difficult for those who wish to practice social distancing. By offering high-quality media for virtual viewing, you will increase buyer interest in your home. This will give you a huge advantage over other home sellers in your neighborhood that isn’t offering virtual showing methods. One more way to offer virtual access is to be available for Facetime or Facebook Live tours.
Related article: https://www.meritrealestate.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-buying-a-home-sight-unseen/
8. Market your home for sale online
It’s no secret that homebuyers are searching for their next home online. Real estate professionals are also finding homes for their buyer clients by using online resources. When it comes to marketing your home online, more is more. Listing your home for sale on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is the best way to make it visible to buyers and agents alike. The MLS automatically syndicates your listing to hundreds of local, national, and international real estate websites.
Social media platforms are another major online venue for real estate marketing. Post your home for sale on platforms such as Facebook, Facebook Marketplace, local Facebook exchange groups, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube. With business accounts on any of these platforms, you also have the option to run sponsored ads to a targeted audience. Running targeted ads on social media can get your home in front of thousands of potential buyers.
9. Get your own home inspection.
A common fear of buyers is that they are purchasing a home that has major defects that they can’t see. Offering them an inspection report on your home as part of your marketing will blow their minds. It will also give them peace of mind that your home is solid. Yes, they will get their own home inspection once an offer is accepted, but getting your own inspection upfront will prepare all parties involved for what to expect.
10. Make your pets disappear when buyers are present.
If you have pets, take them somewhere else during showings and open houses. Having pets present when buyers are viewing the home can be an issue for several reasons. There is always a chance that the buyer doesn’t like animals or is afraid of them. Your beloved dog or cat may also be an unnecessary distraction. All in all, the best practice is to take your pets out of the home when buyers come over.
Bonus tips for selling your home #1
Pricing is everything. Setting the price too high will have buyers submitting their offers on more appropriately priced homes in the area. Pricing too low will produce the most offers, but you risk not getting the most money for your home. A correctly priced home produces the best combination of qualified buyers and strong offers. It often produces multiple-offer situations as well. When there are multiple offers submitted, a ‘bidding war’ may occur. This situation will drive your offer price even higher.
Bonus tips for selling your home #2
There are so many other tips and tricks that professional real estate agents use to sell homes for top dollar. Sure, selling without an agent can save you from paying a commission, there are still costs involved. The best advice we can give you is to hire an experienced local real estate pro to help you with the sale of your home. Doing so will take the pressure off of you and make the whole process smoother.
If you would like to consult with one of our top agents about selling your Southern California home, give us a call at 310-379-4444. If you are not located in Southern California we will refer you to a top local agent in your area.