While we’re still all on Stay-at-Home orders, this is an excellent time to think about getting your home ready for sale. I’m not going into a great deal of interior design theory here, but I do want to share with you some common things that home buyers remark about when touring homes. In particular, I want to tell you about the things that have made people stop in a doorway and not want to go in any further.
1. Cleaning and Decluttering, they go together. They’re the couple that everyone wants to hang out with.
Before you put your home up for sale, you should have completed a thorough cleanse on it. Not just the surface things though. I swear that I have an Aunt who can tell without looking if your measuring cups are properly nestled together in the drawer or if your used grocery bags are folded correctly and stored properly. (God love her, she has a gift.)
If you haven’t recently moved your furniture and cleaned underneath it, not only will your house love you for getting it done, but the buyer’s agent will as well. I had a friend who once said that deep cleaning means you touch every surface… with a cleaning rag. I thought, that’s legit.
I’m not suggesting that you turn cleaning into an Olympic event, but maybe more like the regional championships. You want your home to place before that of your competition, don’t you?
Here’s a secret to making the cleaning easier now and again before a showing: get rid of some stuff. Or to use the catch phrase, declutter. It’s like having a magic eraser. I swear. Too much of anything in any area of your home makes that area appear too small to the buyer. It tells the buyer that there isn’t enough room there for their things and that the area is not functional because there are items spilling out of where they maybe shouldn’t be.
Decluttering is something that you can do now to make your showings-prep easier later on. It’s ever-so-much easier to quickly wipe off a counter with 3 items on it than it is to do 75 items (that’s not a joke, just look at some listing photos you’ll see. If you sort by days on market, start with those homes that have been on the market for a while.) You should also make sure to keep those counter items keep clean. If it’s glass items, make them shine. Put them through the dishwasher from time to time. It’s easy. Plus glass reflects the light and light brings in more cheer.
Speaking of letting the light in, when’s the last time you washed your curtains. Many people have no idea that’s a thing. But it is. It’s a thing. During a showing, whenever possible, your windows should be open. Even if it’s just a little. Some fresh air blowing in and gently moving the curtains just feels like home. If you have thick curtains up and you can possibly at all do without them for a while, take them down. They block the light and the cheer. If you have blinds up, don’t forget about them. They are dust magnets.
Too much furniture blocks the view of the walls and the woodwork and the architecture and it spoils the flow of the house. If your furniture is blocking your windows, it can automatically drop the value of your home down a little notch. If you’ve got a gorgeous view out an unobstructed window, well then, you’ve got a leg up on the competition!
If you’re serious about moving, you might consider renting a storage unit for those things you cannot bear to donate. If renting a unit is not in your budget, maybe a friend has some space that they’ll let you use for a limited time. Pack like-things together and wrap your breakables, so when it is time to move, it’ll make the unpacking easier. Don’t forget to be gracious to your space benefactor, you don’t really know how long you’ll need to keep things there.
Very few people seem to be appreciating carpets in the homes they intend to purchase. But if that’s what you have and there’s nothing you can do about that, save that cleaning for last. Hiring a professional steam-shampooer can be a small miracle and once you’ve gotten your house that far, it’ll be a blessing to hire it done. But if that’s out of the budget, then renting one works too. You’ll just need to arrange some help in moving furniture around and you need to be already to go the minute you get home with the shampoo and the unit. They rent them by the day. Also, it’s better to return unopened shampoo than to run out and stop productivity to traipse back into the store.
I’ll talk more about harmonious staging in later blogs, but getting going on the cleaning and decluttering is step one. Or maybe it’s two actually, or more… now that I think about it. But something to keep in mind is that if you have a wall of family photos, that should be a wall that you’re going to tackle (and repair) in the declutter. It’s okay to keep a photo out here or there though. But be super selective and minimal. Or maybe go ahead and keep them together on a surface, near a big drawer that you can quickly put them in and dust underneath where they sat. I’ve had buyer clients who tend to look at the photos more than the rooms. Which is of course, a marketing fail on the part of the seller.
I always tell my sellers that when buyers enter the home that they love, these homes generally all share a common characteristic. They are clean and they feel open. When a buyer walks into a home it should feel a little more like walking into a super-nice hotel lobby. Have you ever walked into a lobby and just wanted to hang out there? That’s what I mean.
The buyer should also feel like the home is easy to keep clean and it that it practically cleans itself. Dust on the coffee table and spots on the counter deter the buyer from the beauty of your home, because their mind wanders to how much time they’ll spend cleaning it in the future. I’ve seen buyers rest their hand near a spot on the counter and just stare for a while. You just know their thinking about cleaning. We want them to be thinking about buying.
Remember that your goal is not to sell people on how much you love your family or your Beanie Baby collection, it’s to showcase your home by showing off its best features and in its best light. And yes, you “live here”. But you don’t want to and that’s the point. You want other people to want to live here. So it’s important to do what you can to make sure that the right buyer realizes that they’ve found the right home.