What You Should Do Before Selling Your Home
It’s amazing how many things you let go in your house when you’ve lived there a long time. Many little things go wrong, and you just live with them. Usually, you don’t even realize all these little things until you go to sell your house. Most people don’t even see the problems until a potential buyer or the real estate agent points them out.
The first thing you should do is take a piece of paper and write down a list of the things that need fixed. Put in your list things like the closet door that won’t close all the way- or stay closed, The squeaky door, the stuck window, and the button that needs jiggled on the thermostat, and the crack in the ceiling from where the house settled.
Next, fix everything on that list. It does no good to have a list of problems if you don’t take care of the problems.
After you fix these things, make another list. This list is for what looks dingy and needs to be replaced or repainted. Walk through your house with the list and write down things like walls that need to be repainted, what carpets should be replaced, what fixtures in the house need to be retired,etc.
Don’t do anything on this list yet, this list will help you with the next part, and then you can fix everything.
Now go through your house and look at it again. Do your things take up a lot of space? Is the house too cluttered with useless items? You need to look and find out exactly what you need to keep your house going. Put everything else in storage. People don’t want to see your things, and the less personal effects that you have out in the open, the easier it is for potential home buyers to envision their own things in the house.
Also, see if there is anyway to brighten up the house and make it look bigger. You can make your house look bigger by re-arranging your furniture or getting rid of unnessesary pieces of furniture. A house can be brightened up by havingthiner curtains and painting the walls certain colors-all lighter shades. See why I said not to paint and replace things yet?
Now you can paint and replace things, rearrange the furniture, etc.
Now that you have fixed your house and cleaned it up, keep it spotless all of the time. This may be time consuming, but you never know when a potantial home buyer might stop by.
Doing all of these things will help greatly with how your home looks to the home buyer, and can help your home sell much faster.
