Have you found yourself asking, “how can I sell my house fast?” You are not alone. Getting top dollar for your home is mostly determined by the market in your area, but these 5 steps will improve the odds of selling your house fast for a good price.
Improve Curb Appeal
Sell your house fast by putting yourself in your buyer’s shoes and take a good look at your home from their perspective. Get in the car, drive around the block, and look at your house as you drive by. Then ask yourself if you would buy your own home. Look at the landscape and exterior of the house and find ways to clean up, touch up, and upgrade where it makes sense. Cut the lawn, trim the shrubs and trees, and remove your garden Gnomes! If you have a door that is painted or stained, redo it. It is one of the first impressions your buyer will have as they enter the home. Take pictures on a sunny day and wet down everything but the house to make things look fresh and clean.
Remove Personal Items
Minimize to maximize. You want your potential buyers to walk in your home and feel like its their new home. One of the best ways to create this feeling is to remove your personal items and stow them away. Remove family photos, craft materials, newspapers, books, magazines and other clutter from counter tops and desks. Put jewelry away, and store mixers, blenders, and toasters, in a cabinet or pantry. Make sure your refrigerator is free of clutter and those cute little magnetic do-dads. When you are done, nobody should be able to tell who lives in the house or what their day to day life looks like.
Listen to Stewart Title's On The Air about how important staging your home can be. Start listening at the 3:10 minute mark.
Replace Kitchen Appliances
Here’s a sell my house fast tip for marketing to prospective home buyers that are women. We’ve never met a woman that didn’t like a shiny new kitchen. You might not be able to remodel the whole kitchen, but consider this. New kitchen appliances are an investment that can produce big returns. If your appliances are considered vintage, worn out or out-dated you might want to think about replacing them. A matching dish washer, refrigerator, stove, and microwave creates uniformity. Most Home buyers want a kitchen they can begin to use the day they move in. When a buyer walks into a kitchen and sees all new appliances, it’s easy for them to imagine the kitchen is theirs. Combined with new cabinet hardware, sparkling windows, and a good cleaning, new appliances absolutely increase the desirability of your home.
Minimize Furniture
Removing furniture will give every buyer what she wants, open space and a blank canvas to envision her own style. The picture to the right is designed by ND Interiors. It is a beautiful layout with just the right amount of furniture for a family to live comfortably in style. But when it comes to selling a house, it may be a good idea to remove one sofa, which will make it feel much more spacious. If you have a lot of extra furniture you might consider renting a storage unit for a few months until your house sells.
Go Away – Take the Family And Play
When you know buyers are coming, gather the family and go away. Don’t forget Fido the dog or Coco the cat. Take the whole family to play in the snow, go to a movie, or out for ice cream. The key is to go away. The whole purpose of staging a home is to allow the buyer to imagine the space as theirs. When you are home, it is like you are invading their imagination. Its not that they don’t want to meet you and talk to you about the home. They do. But save that for a later, after your real estate agent has shown them the home and understands what the buyers’ wants and needs are.
One Last Word Of Caution
When you finally do meet your buyers, keep telling yourself these two things over and over:
If I want to sell my house fast, “I must remember that I am legally and morally required to disclose the “bad” stuff about the house like past flooded basements, leaky pipes, or the 7 dogs that live next door and bark all night long,” Don’t confuse marketing your house in the best light, with being honest. It will come back to haunt you in the end.
Also, keep in mind that the more you say, the less people remember. And it is usually the negative that they remember. Keep reminding yourself, “If I want to sell my house fast, I need to be careful not to criticize my home when I meet my buyers or their agent.” They don’t need to know the personal history of your family in the house. Let them create their own. You don’t need to talk about why you couldn’t stand how the kitchen cupboards opened into the refrigerator, or how Mrs Johnson could see into your bathroom from her living room until you put up curtains. You want the buyer to imagine living in the home, as theirs, without putting ideas or doubts into their mind.
We would love to hear your ideas about staging a home to sell and what has worked for you. Please leave us a comment below.
