Getting your home ready for a potential sale can be a bit of a nerve wracking task. You have to clean your home immaculately, light it properly, make sure your fixtures sparkle and basically get your home in a condition that you would never live in just to have a stranger walk throughout your house.
While all of that may be true, getting a potential buyer to see your home as you do is a crucial step in marketing your property. The better you convey the unique and wonderful nature of your home, the more likely you are to receive a full offer on the property in short order. Homes that show well have the tendency to sell quickly, meaning that you will never have to clean that particular home so thoroughly ever again.
That is all well and good but for most people, the time and energy it takes to make a home sparkle simply isn't available. So, to help cut through a bit of that tedium, there are some tips you can use to make sure that your effort is spent in the right area, maximizing the effect on a potential buyer will ensuring that your effort is used in a smart way.
Go On Clutter Patrol
The simple fact is that most buyers will envision your home not in a way that they would decorate it, but in the way it looks when they see it. If your home is full of random toys on the ground or an unmade bed or two, that is the impression the buyer will take away from your entire home. A sloppy, cluttered look is simply not a good image to have attached to your property.
Organization of your home is a great thing to aspire to but not everyone has the time or money to invest in elaborate shelving systems or a clever series of drawers to hold excess items. Instead, be practical about what you pick up and how you arrange it. Your kids' toys can be out, just not thrown all over the floor. A toy bin is a simple way to get them out of the way of a buyer without calling for excessive effort.
Minimize Your Personal Items
Leaving furniture out that you have purchased to accent your home shows off your personality and is a fine way to give a property a home-like feeling. Leaving out that fun vacation picture you took of your family where everyone is making a funny face might show a little bit too much personality and give the buyer a notion of you that can color how they feel about your property.
Getting a buyer to envision living in the property is the ultimate goal of a showing and with your life dominating picture frames and walls all around the home, that can be a difficult phenomenon to accomplish. Do what you can to remove yourself from the home's surroundings and instead make it as easy as possible for a buyer to start daydreaming about how the home will fit them, not how it fit you.
Certainly, showing a home can be a daunting prospect at first. Though cleaning is an important part of the showing process, going beyond that without spending too much time and effort through removing clutter and storing away the majority of your most personal items will make the showing of your home more effective. Do what you can to highlight your home instead of your life through your showing and you will achieve better results. Cleaning 10 hours a day is simply not practical. Instead, focus on what you can change quickly to show off the beauty of your home.
This is another original article by Joe Lane, co-owner of The Lane Real Estate Team at http://www.joelane.com/. Are you looking for an experienced Tri City WA Real Estate agency? With 20 years of service based, business experience, Joe and Colleen Lane work hard to serve home buyers and sellers for the Tri Cities of Washington's Kennewick, Richland, Pasco, and surrounding areas.
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