7 Tricks For Selling Your Home

We touched on this subject a little bit throughout a few of our articles, but today we wanted to go more in-depth about the aesthetics of your home.

Once you decide to sell your home, your goal should be to make it look its best. By doing so, you can present your home in the best light so that potential buyers can go from one room to another and instantly envision themselves living in this space.

It’s obviously better to have a sparkling home for buyers to imagine themselves in (even if they themselves wouldn’t upkeep it as such) than for your home to be cluttered and messy. For potential buyers, a clean home leaves a great impression and lets their sense of living in the space run wild, whereas a messier home is distracting and harder to overcome mentally.

Along the lines of what we just mentioned, today’s article is all about these few simple tricks to get your home ready and up for sale:

1. See things in the best light

Bright Light

We cannot stress enough the importance of good lighting for any space in your house, both inside and out.

It’s one of the simplest and cheapest things you can do for your house to make the rooms look better, brighter and emit that homey vibe everyone is after.

Sometimes the lighting job is as easy as replacing that broken lamp or changing the bulbs for a brighter wattage, but other times, it covers a wider range of things: natural lighting, bedding and cover colors, ambient light and even mirrors.

When taking care of the lighting in your house, it’s important to first envision what you want to accomplish with the lighting. Go from room to room and do a small audit of the light fixtures. See what type of lighting every room needs, where natural light is lacking, what color of drapes would provide the best light through and where you can add mirrors to reflect the natural light.

Don’t forget to take into consideration that your house will be presented at every time of the day, so once you’ve placed all the lights and lighting accessories, envision what the rooms would look like both during the day and at night.

At the end of the day, when your realtor is presenting your house to potential buyers, they will make sure that the lights are on even if its daytime, to capture the house in all of its glory. This just goes to show that not only interior designers want to highlight the importance of good lighting, but also realtors.

2. Half-Empty Closets go a Long Way

Clean Closet

When you’re selling your house, you need to sell every inch of it for as high a price as you can, including areas you wouldn’t initially think of.

Like closets, for instance.

Have you heard that full closets can make buyers feel like there is not enough storage room in the whole house? There are even some cases when potential buyers have walked out of a house because they felt like there wasn’t enough storage space in the closets.

That’s why you need to make sure your closets aren’t full to the brim.

For this purpose, you can put some clothes and other items in storage for a certain time to declutter the closets and give potential buyers a greater sense of space. This will allow the extra space to be an added selling feature to the house, which wouldn’t be the case if they were packed and hard for the buyers to picture empty.

3. Take out the Pets

We all love our pets and wouldn’t trade them for the world, but the reality is that not everyone shares the same feeling as we do.

There are some people that aren’t quite fond of pets, those that may be allergic to certain types of pets, while others may even be completely terrified of them. And that last bit goes both ways. Your pet can also be terrified when strangers come while you’re hosting an open house.

That’s why the best thing you can do for both sides is to remove the pet from your home during showings or relocate them temporarily while your house is up for sale. It might be a hard thing to do for you, but it will be easier to show buyers the house when you don’t have a huge distraction to think of.

Besides, your fuzzy friend won’t convince the buyers to buy the house, regardless of how many cute tricks you’ve taught them.

4. Be Careful About Overdoing Home Makeovers

Home Makeover

Doing some minor repairs and renovations can be a great way to see great returns on investment when selling your house. However, make sure not to overdo things and forget about the generic taste of people.

While a bright pink Jacuzzi in the dining room might seem like a great addition to you, to others this could be a negative thing, even a ridiculous addition when they’re considering buying the house. However, if you’re unsure of what to do when renovating your house, some projects that do see returns on investment include:

  • Kitchen renovations (improving counter-tops, sinks, stove-tops, etc.)
  • Painting (fresh paint in safe colours in your spaces give them a new look and feel)
  • Bathroom renovations
  • Upgraded Flooring (hardwood for example)
  • Basement / Income Suite renovations

5. Remove the Personal Feeling

open Bedroom

Every buyer already has an idea of what they want their future house to look like and tries to portray that into the house they’re currently touring. However, if you have all your personal stuff left throughout the whole house, potential buyers will have a hard time envisioning themselves living here.

This is why it’s important to depersonalize your home as much as you can before you put it up for sale.

Think of the home you’re selling as a business deal to be done. Taking out the personal pictures, pet toys, and so on will help when showing the house to potential buyers. They will want to be able to imagine starting a home for themselves there – having personal effects can be distracting.

Of course, you shouldn’t remove literally everything and make it look like no one has lived here for the past few years, but just enough so that your house can still look like a warm, cozy family home while allowing potential buyers to add their personal touch to every corner.

6. Curb Appeal

Curb Appeal

Curb appeal is how your house looks from the outside and it is important to make a lasting first impression with it.

Remember, no matter how great the inside looks, if the outside is in disrepair, it can throw the entire viewing off for a potential buyer and make the deal go south before they even step foot in the house.

Making your yard and front façade look great is the first step in the right direction. Planting a few well-trimmed trees, several colorful plants and a can make your house look more appealing to buyers and ultimately, increase its value and price.

7. Choose the Right Agent

Agent

Although it’s not directly related to the look of the house, having a good Realtor can help you make your home (and you along with it) as sale-ready as ever.

They will know exactly how to make the right changes and touches to make your home stand out above the rest. A good Realtor can also guide you through the whole process and provide their professional advice about which areas require your attention. This will ultimately have a major impact on how fast and how high you will be able to sell your house for in the end.

We’re always interested in helping our clients’ homes look their best for a sale and help them get the best deal. See how we can help by filling out this quick application form. Get started here.


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