We will probably be selling our first house in the next 6 - 12 months and we aren’t sure where to start to get it ready to sell. The house will be less than 20 years old when it goes on the market, but obviously there are things that either should be done before putting it on the market or will help with the selling price. What are some helpful tips that others have learned when they’ve sold their houses? And how do you decide which things are worth doing versus those that really don’t add much in the end? Do you usually have a real estate agent or inspector come through before listing to make recommendations?
Since many of us are basically pack rats, one of the easiest things to do is de-clutter. Try to put away nick-knacks and/or other personal items that basically a buyer would have little interest. If you’re using a Realtor, take advantage of their expertise during a walk through and ask them the question you put forth here.
This. Don’t just put away/organize stuff, get rid of stuff. That “perfectly usable” thing that’s been gathering dust in the corner for five years? Don’t put it away, get rid of it, and get rid of the five hundred other things like it in your house. Stacks of old magazines, haphazard piles of scrap wood/metal in your workshop, those three toasters in the cupboard with the broken timers that still toast toast, those old clothes in your closet you haven’t worn for years.
Once you’ve cleared out the clutter and junk, then you can work on tidying what’s left. It feels a lot better walking through a house that’s not jam-packed with stuff, even if that stuff is organized.
It can be a bit tricky, but we’ve found that one key is to leave enough stuff in the house and visible so that potential buyers see it as a comfortable place to live, but not so much stuff that they can’t picture their stuff in it. You don’t want to give them a completely blank canvas (rooms always look so much smaller without furniture), but you don’t want to inadvertently lose a buyer just because their aesthetic or decorating style is different than yours. As much as possible, get things down to fairly neutral colors and decorations.
As for repairs or “upgrades” we’ve always paid for a home inspector to come through before we put the house on the market so we have some idea of what might become an issue. If there’s a clear code or safety violation, fix that before listing. If it’s just a matter of an older appliance or a repair that might be necessary in the next, say, 5 years or so, then just factor that into the sale price of the house.
A few tips I’ve learned through experience and also from working with real estate agents:
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Generally speaking, people want homes that they can move into and live in right now. Keep that in mind at all times.
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Be realistic about the listing price - do your homework and see what comparable homes (same number of bed, bath, sq ft, etc) are selling for in your neighborhood. You’re not going to beat the market, and in fact, you ideally don’t want to be the most expensive house on your block, either. Check your comps. If the market is going up in your market, you can maybe see what the last few homes have sold for and nudge the price up a little. You want the house to sell, not sit on the market for months and having potential buyers ask “What’s wrong with it? Why is it still on the market?”
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Don’t remodel unless you need to, and worry about the kitchen and bathrooms the most. Those are the two types of remodeling that will give you bang for the buck. But converting extra living room space into a bedroom? Knocking out walls? Converting a garage into a playroom? Probably not worth it.
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Replacing appliances if they’re near the end of their lifespan is probably worth it, but don’t overspend. If you have an old fridge or an old range, new air compressor (heat/cooling), new water heater, or other outdated equipment, consider replacing it with quality replacements but not necessarily top of the line models. People dread the thought of having to buy new stuff, but you can spend too much.
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Consider painting your interior walls white or off white if it’s not too much trouble. The reason is people have different preferences about colors. People can imagine a home’s potential more with basic colors than they can with colors like green or burgundy.
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You can sell your home yourself but consider getting a good agent from a friend or someone you trust. The downside of an agent is that you have to give them a commission. Sometimes, their ideas are not the same as yours, but just tell them (in a nice way) upfront that you’ll listen to their input but in the end, it’s your house. On the positive side, they can do a lot of the work for you that can eat into your time if you’re busy. And good ones can make the process go faster.
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Clean and tidy up your home before showing and putting it on Zillow. This is a must! I’ve seen so many photos on Zillow where people didn’t clean their homes and it just looks shitty (Gee, wonder why your home with a moldy basement full of trash hasn’t sold in 6 months?). Your home needs to look its absolute best before being put on the market. I’ve seen good homes with a lot of potential just sit because owners couldn’t be bothered to put some effort into making the home look cleaner.
If you have the option, find out the best time of the year to put your place on the market. Remember, curb appeal gets people in your door. For my last home March was the target month. Things were green, weather was mild and usually sunny. Where I am now the same conditions occur in May and June.
What they said! Spend some time looking at similar homes for sale in the mls in your area on Realtor or Zillow to give you an idea of the local market. Absolutely de clutter then go through and de clutter again. Even rent a storage facility if you have to and clean clean clean. Don’t feel you have to have pictures of every room at every angle. Tidy the yard trim back overgrown stuff, paint your front door if it’s blah
I concur with the advice to organize and clean, clean, clean!
Take down drapes and wash them. Wipe down walls, base boards and ceiling fans. Knock down cobwebs. Clean the windows and the window sill. Take down light globes and de-bug and wash them. Weed the garden. A week before you put your house on the market, get the carpets steam cleaned.
In addition to decluttering, remove personal photos and such. Allow prospective buyers to envision it as THEIR home, rather than as YOUR home.
In my area, houses that look like the standard HGTV home - whites and greys, white kitchens, etc. Not my taste, but seems to appeal to the young couples moving to our burb from Chicago.
Take a good look at curb appeal. Paint the front door, trim bushes, maybe put in a pot or 2.
While it doesn’t hurt to have it clean and in good repair, I’ve been shocked at the poor condition of homes I see for sale which sell. My impression is that a recent trend is for buyers to use the inspection as an opportunity to renegotiate price, so don’t go overboard on repairs. Decide up front what you will or won’t be willing to do when asked.
Bottomline - it all comes down to price. Be realistic as to what you need/expect to get or are willing to accept.
If you’re hiring a local real estate agent, they’re in a better position to advise you than are random strangers on the internet. Like for example, depending on the age and condition of the house and the market conditions, it might just be bought as a tear-down. In other words, a buyer would be more interested in what could be built on the lot than actually occupying the house. In that case, it doesn’t matter what staging or renovating you do as they’re literally going to start by demolishing it.
Paint the interior flat white. Make it look like a blank canvas, don’t make a buyer think they’ll have to adjust to your tastes in interior decorating.
If the exterior isn’t attractive, peeling paint, old dirty siding, then you need to take care of that or just start burning a big pile of $100 bills because that’s what you are doing to your sale price.
I have been through this a number of times and can offer a couple of tips:
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The larger the market in which you reside, the more you need professional advice. If you chose to eschew using an agent, at the very least have an attorney familiar with real estate transactions onboard. There are a lot of legal and regulatory technicalities that vary state to state that can bite you in the butt. Even though I have a fair amount of experience in residential real estate deals, I don’t do it often enough to remember the details or stay abreast of legal technicalities. As a rule of thumb, do not engage friends or relatives*. Interview several agents and pick one that has a track record of successful sales transactions over a period of years.
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Once you hire a professional, follow their advice even if you don’t like it. (Ergo, choose someone who you respect.)
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Remember that Time is Money. Whatever the eventual selling price of your home, you will likely believe that you could have done better given a little more time. Perhaps. But my experience has been that my house ends up being worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it at the time I’m selling it, regardless of what I think.
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a. Don’t get greedy. Recognize the value (not just the cost) of compromise. If I let my pride and ego get in the way, I can easily let a difference of a couple of thousand dollars or less kill a deal worth hundreds of thousands. There is no guarantee that there’s another buyer out there. If the carrying cost of my home is a couple thousand dollars a month and it might take a month or two to attract another legitimate offer I can calculate exactly how much the bird in my hand is worth.
+There are skads of incompetent real estate agents out there - and most of us are one or two degrees of separation away from several. Don’t hire anyone you are unwilling to fire. Especially avoid the inexperienced or part-timer.
Good luck.
When I sold my house people told me to hang a new front door and work on landscaping. I did that and almost changed my mind about selling, it looked so good.
We have been going through this for a few months, with the house about to go on the market.
- Get as much disposable junk out as possible, including any hazardous waste removed (oil-based paints, used engine oil etc).
- As mentioned previously, cleaning is important. Painting as necessary, de-molding and minor repairs including stuff like kitchen cabinet touch-ups*. Fix leaky toilets, non-working light fixtures, electrical problems. I wouldn’t bother with getting a home inspector in; the prospective buyer should do that and at that point you can negotiate with them about what gets done (the older the house, the more stuff there is that theoretically can/should be fixed. You’re not obligated to take care of every last thing the inspector notes. If necessary you can knock a bit more off the price and let the buyer deal with the recommended fix if they want).
- Significant remodeling is probably not cost-effective. Don’t buy new appliances if the old ones work.
- Tidy up landscaping i.e. removing dead trees/large branches especially if it looks like they could fall on the house. Consider adding a few flowering/foliage plants that will look nice during the selling period. Don’t go overboard; a neat look is fine.
Some advice relating to our home search: Vacate your house when someone is coming over to see it, don’t hang around. Do not fuss over strangers dirtying up your carpet (I actually encountered a seller who had a sign on the door asking visitors to remove their shoes so as not to sully her white carpeting).
Interview at least a couple of real estate agents. You may get radically different advice about what needs to be fixed up and what the initial selling price should be. Photographs of your home/property while emphasizing the positives should not be photoshopped to cover up negatives (yes, I’ve encountered this).
*semi-hot tip: Old English makes a scratch cover stain/polish for rejuvenating cabinetry that works very nicely.
Our real estate agent gave us the decluttering adcice that we mostly followed. Took down all the personal photos and some of the wall art (a lot of that painted by my FIL, who was a good amateur artist). We did not replace the appliances and did no painting. The house sold above the listing price the day after it went on the market and we actually got an even higher offer after we had signed the deal. And the offer we took explicitly declined an inspection, which was one reason we didn’t try to cancel it (on a technicality we could have) for the higher offer.
What happened after that was a complete renovation on their part. They threw out all the old appliances, they took down the interior walls; they took away the back porch which was one of our great selling points (we thought) and extended the kitchen into the back yard. Took down all our beautiful lilacs. I don’t think anything the agent suggested made the least difference. We had two other offers that day although one wasn’t serious.
We had an offer on our last house the day of the first open house, in a not particularly hot market. We decluttered the hell out of the house, using a storage area and the attic.
We did repaint because it needed it, but it isn’t worth doing unless there are obvious issues since the buyers might want a different color scheme. Ditto with carpets.
One thing we learned that hasn’t been mentioned - do the decluttering and general cleaning up before you have the realtor in to look. We think the house could have been priced higher if it were in better shape at the time.
When we looked for our new house in California we were amazed at how many people didn’t seem to give a crap about the condition. We visited houses with holes in the wall, houses with a room full of junk, houses with all sorts of stuff piled in the bedroom. I’m not talking spotless just in case someone visited, I’m talking conditions I wouldn’t want in my house any time. This was before the housing boom. The people we bought from put their house on the market, took it off for renovations, then put it on again, which resulted in a long ToM and a better price for us.
We toured some new houses on the next block, and it was interesting to see professional tricks. They put in furniture that would probably be too small for a resident, which made the room look bigger. They had nothing over the windows which made things look brighter, and they even removed some doors which gave more space.
Another reason for not bringing in a home inspector before putting the house on the market is that (depending on the meticulousness of the inspector) you could wind up with a big list of “defects” which you would either have to fix, or depending on the law in your jurisdiction, have to list on the real estate disclosure form to potential buyers, potentially scaring some of them off.
On the other hand, a report from the buyer’s inspector will come after an offer is in place, when (presumably) the buyer wants the house and is looking forward to moving in. That doesn’t mean the seller can ignore significant issues, but the buyer is likely to be less picky about small stuff and/or amenable to minor price adjustments to cover fix-ups, sparing the buyer the pain of having to get someone in for estimates and repairs.
Re houses full of stuff: in addition to clutter being unappealing, as a buyer I wondered in a couple of cases how the owners could possibly get all that crap out of the house and outbuildings in time for the closing.
We’ve looked at houses from two points of view. My husband and I (in our younger days) were inclined to look at a house for its bones, knowing we could change what we wanted to change according to our preferences. For example, our current home was really ugly, bordering on tacky, but we saw the potential and put in a contract the first day it was on the market. I expect most people would have been put off by the contact paper on the walls and the yellow-and-orange shag carpet and the tiny closets - we’ve fixed all that and more, and we really like the place.
On the other hand, we just finished helping our daughter in the hunt for her first house. While she thought she wanted a place to fix up, she wound up buying a (almost) ready-to-move-in house where she just plans to paint every room before moving in. Fixer-uppers would have been cheaper, but with a toddler, she and her husband really wouldn’t have had enough time and energy to go to their jobs, care for the kid, and work on the house.
Which is a long way around the block to say the right house and the right buyer have to come together at the right time.
Apart from that, I fully agree about cleaning and de-cluttering, doing obvious repairs, and consider slapping neutral paint on more dramatic walls. And definitely be absent when potential buyers come by. We had a woman follow us thru one house we were checking out and I nearly choked from holding back snarky comments about the house. (It really was, um, unique. Especially the master bedroom where her adult daughter was lying on the bed smoking and watching TV as we came thru.) We even had one seller tell us they didn’t want us to cut down a particular tree if we bought the place. Yeah, right. (We did buy it and we did cut it down.)
That’s hilarious.
I’ve spent years planting trees and establishing a garden at the place we’re selling. If the buyers want to pave it and put up a giant parking lot, I’m fine with it, as long as we get a good price.
Thank you everyone, these have been very helpful. The decluttering is the part I dread the most - my husband is a pack-rat and it will be like pulling teeth to get rid of some stuff. We may end up with a heck of a garage sale!
And thanks for the input on how to select a realtor, the timing, not having it inspected beforehand, etc.