Prepare Your Home

How to Prepare Your Home

The saying “first impressions are everything” couldn’t be more true when it comes to selling a home. One of the most labor intensive steps to selling a home is getting the home prepared and ready for showings, but it doesn’t have to break your bank account. If you do it right, the benefits will cover the costs of your efforts and then some. We’ve broken this process of preparing your home for sale down into four parts:

1. Depersonalizing & Decluttering Your Home

It’s hard for prospective buyers to imagine themselves and all of their stuff inside your home if your own personal knick knacks are taking over the space. In order to avoid distracting the buyer, eliminate as many personal items from view as possible. By creating a neutral space, you allow buyers to view your home as a blank canvas. So, take down the family photos and put away a lifetime of memorabilia; once your home is sold, you can flaunt your style and collections once more, but in your brand new home.

2. Cleaning Your Home From Top to Bottom

Any good agent will tell you how important it is to have a clean house if you’re serious about selling your home. If you’re going to continue to live in your home up until it is sold — as most people do — it is especially important to keep up with the cleaning every day while the home is on the market. A messy home will surely turn away most buyers, so glove up and get to work. A clean, neat home does wonders for showings. Keep carpets vacuumed, mop hardwood floors to a nice shine, wipe the counters down, and dust all surfaces. We also recommend washing the baseboards, cleaning out kitchen cupboards, and having any stains professionally removed. Try to make your home as clean as an upscale hotel room. We promise the work will be worth it.

3. Staging Your Home

In order to stage your home effectively, you’ll need to look at your home from another perspective. Staging a home involves optimizing the space to improve the look, use, and feel of every room. If you’re using that extra bedroom as an in-home office, revert it back to its original purpose. Add, remove, or rearrange furniture to paint a picture of endless possibilities. Cover up any marks on the wall with a fresh coat of paint and buy some new throw pillows or towels. If decorating isn’t your forte, choose a real estate agent with professional experience to help you stage your home. Enlisting the help of professionals isn’t a bad idea; top realtors know how to make homes appealing to a large number of buyers and can save you time and money. The amount of effort you put into staging your home will have a significant impact on the length of time it takes to sell your home, and the selling price.

4. Renovating & Repairing Your Home

The majority of buyers aren’t going to buy a home in need of a lot of repairs or renovation — not unless you’re willing to sell your home for less to make up for it. Call your favorite handyman and make an effort in fixing all of those little things you’ve put off until now. Fix any leaky faucets, repair dents in the walls, replace broken knobs or handles, and upgrade the light fixtures. Don’t forget to take care of the outside of the house as well. Check to make sure the gutters are firmly secured and replace any missing bricks or shingles. Trust us; it will make a huge difference to buyers and you’ll be able to list your house for more money.

How Accattato & CO. Can Help You Prepare Your Home for Sale

Accattato & CO. Real Estate has helped hundreds of sellers prepare their homes for sale, and we can help you too. By choosing us as your Realtor, you’ll get:

• Expert advice
• Honest feedback — no sugarcoating. We’ll tell you straight up what you need to do to get your home ready.
• Referrals to our favorite and most trusted vendors
• Certified staging services
• A team you can rely on around the clock