It is certain that there are many house selling tips that can pay off when it comes to encouraging that elusive buyer to make a fair offer. For example, unless you’ve been in solitary confinement and unable to access TV for a few years you’ll probably be aware that one thing you must do is prepare your property well and then ‘stage’ it effectively.
Just in case you haven’t heard of staging it is basically the process, once the house has had a quick, economic make over, of presenting the rooms with ‘just enough’ of the small decorative finishing touches to make it look inspiring to a purchaser but leaving enough of a blank canvas not to overwhelm their ability to imagine your house as their future home!
You can hire a professional home-stager, but they are really for those folks with high paying jobs, and a high-ticket home, as they don’t come cheap. Naturally, if you fit the description, then go ahead and hire a professional. It has been proved many times over that a sale can be made more easily, more quickly and usually at a better price with the staging done just right. In the best case scenario the premium you get on your price, without so much downward wrangling, can more than justify the cost of that professional home stager.
But for a large proportion of folks the professional’s fee may just seem too much to swallow and there is a lot you can do to achieve the ‘look that sells’ and helps to answer that question of “How to sell a house?” most effectively.
Here are a magnificent seven house selling tips to start getting you thinking like a professional stager:
#1 — If you are in a hurry to sell you need to be prepared to designate both time and budget to the purpose of preparing and staging your home. If you can spare the time, and take some days off work for the purpose you could achieve the majority of most basic jobs within one to two weeks.
#2 — As for the budget you ought to be prepared to spend between 1 and 3 percent of your hoped-for selling price. Bear in mind that if you do the job well you’ll be saving mortgage outgoings one every month quicker that you sell the place, plus you’ll be able to expect to make less compromise on the actual final price which should make up for the relatively small investment. This means that on a US$150,000 house you should budget to spend from US$1,500 to US$4,500 on the minor repairs, decoration and some accoutrements. Remember that some of the ‘decor items’ that you purchase should come with you so they don’t count as ‘losses’ – but make sure that, if possible, they are things you’ll look forward to keeping!
#3 — Get yourself in the ‘right’ frame of mind. The property you are selling WAS your home, but now it is just a commodity that you are selling, just like any other commodity. You need to break the attachment that you may have to ‘the old place’. You are (hopefully) going on to better things so the time has come to ‘say goodbye’ to your home well before any prospective buyer sets foot across the threshold. It can be a wrench, but it pays dividends to begin to look at the house in this different, dissociated light.
#4 — Linked to the foregoing factor – get into every room and de-personalize it. Make sure you have removed anything that shouts that it is ‘you’ and ‘yours’. You need to get the rooms back to basic canvases that are clear and easy to visualize in any form the potential buyer needs to see in their minds eye. When your prospects start to view your home they need to be in the frame of mind of “seeing themselves” living there, and not distracted by your knick-knacks and personal memorabilia!
#5 — This leads to the next major step (really part of what has been suggested) and that is the de-cluttering phase. It is amazing how many people who are ‘desperate’ to sell undermine their potential sales efforts by introducing would-be buyers to rooms that are crammed to the gill with all sort of ‘stuff’. Clear out the clutter, stand back from the rooms and make sure there are no piles of this that or the other left around. You need to get your home back to the state it may have been when you moved in with every room looking as large and impressive and ‘roomy’ as it can do.
#6 — You may ask: “But where do we put our stuff?” (Assuming you don’t want to bin it all!) The answer is simple: one of your incidental expenses should be to rent space at your local ‘self storage’ depot. You can stash your ‘trash’ — sorry personal items of sentimental worth – safely and securely and for a few dollars a week get en route to making that sale much quicker! Well worth the cost!
#7 — And there is another good reason for de-cluttering, tidying and generally creating an air of organization and attention to detail. This is the ‘psychological’ impression it can create within the minds of your prospect. It should look like there is a place for everything, and everything in its place. If you look as if you ‘care’ it gives confidence to your buyer that you have probably ‘looked after’ the place in other respects too. This can be a real boon in helping to give that extra push to a buyer to make an offer. So make sure that that de-cluttering and ‘removal to storage’ is comprehensive — if you just load cupboards, drawers and cabinets full of your ‘items’ they are almost bound to be opened by ‘nosy’ prospects, and if a torrent of ‘bric-a-brac’ tumbles out it will severely undermine your efforts to create the perfect stage.
Naturally these ideas are just the house selling tips of some proverbial icebergs when it comes to discovering how to sell a house effectively. Hence there will be another batch of tips for selling your home published soon.