Selling Your Home -Tips From Professionals

Selling Your Home can be a daunting task for long time home owners.  Follow our tips on how to smooth the way for selling your home and getting Top Dollar.  Selling your home will take some work, but just because it will take effort does not mean it needs to be any harder than necessary.  Remember one of the best selling assets your home can have is Curb Appeal.  ( First Impressions Tend to Stick )

Selling Your Home – Landscaping

The first things buyers are going to look at as they pull up to your house is the landscape – lawn, plants, flowerbeds, etc. Now you don’t have to spend a lot of money, you just need to clean up the yard and make sure things look neat and tidy.  Mow the lawn, trim your bushes and buy a few bags of mulch to pour in the flower beds to tie things together. Adding some colour to planters and trimming bushes can make a big difference in appeal.  In real estate sales, first impressions count. In the winter a clean driveway and shovelled sidewalks go a long way to impressing clients coming for a showing.  Even cleaning snow of and decks and balcony will help show off these features.

Ideally the time to get started cleaning up your yard is about a month before you plan on showing your house. That should give you enough time to get everything looking just right and not leave the impression that you simply waited until the last minute to try and improve your homes curb appeal. 

Selling Your Home – Staging

Staging your home is offered Free by many professional real estate agents.  Along with professional photographs, staging can bring out the best features of a home, displaying your home in its best possible light.  Statistics show that homes that have been professionally staged sell faster and for more money.

One of the key features of staging is to declutter your home.  Some people will have to rent a storage space to temporarily store their clutter.  Clutter will make a home feel smaller than it actually is and will help interested buyers see your homes full potential.

Selling Your Home – Fresh Paint

Unless you are a professional decorator there is a chance you have some rooms in your home that may have dark or dreat colours, or a childs room painted a very drastic colour.  There is not another home improvement that will give you more bang for your buck than a fresh coat of paint. From a selling standpoint, it is important to stick with neutral colors.  Plus a fresh coat of paint will remove scrapes, scratches and stains accumulated over the years from general use, children and pets.  Also if you are one of the few people who smoke in their homes, can bring a fresh smell back to your home.  ( carpets will also require steam cleaning to remove dirt and odours )

Selling Your Home – Hiring a Realtor

An experienced Local Real Estate Agent can often sell your home faster and for a better price than you can on your own. This is one of the most valuable tips for selling a home. Take your time and research Realtors before making a short  list and interviewing prospective agents.

Before a real estate agent even begins their work of selling a home, they can be a great source of knowledge in pricing your home correctly. Without the right price, everything else you do will be meaningless! Don’t be like so many other sellers who put an over the top price tag on their home. This is a sure recipe for failure as most people will assume there is a problem with a house that stays on the market for a longer time than compable homes.

Many home buyers are interested in the costs of running your home if they decide to purchase.  It’s always a good idea to know the facts and to have this information ready for potential buyers. Take time to research this information and have it readily available for buyers or real estate agents.  Some realtors will leave an information package out for showings so buyers know the facts right away.

Every buyer is aware of some of the major costs involved in owning a home.  If you have any recent repairs, upgrades or renovations it would be a great feature to have copies of invoices, building permits, septic services or any other improvement available to purchasers.

You local real estate agent will know the market like the back of their hand and be very knowledgeable about pricing and inventory which may affect home prices.

Pre-Lising Home Inspection

Many savvy home sellers will hire a Professional Home Inspector to inspect and create a report listing any deficiencies or any repairs that need to be fixed prior to marketing your property. After all, many home buyers will get a home inspection too, so this type of pre-inspection will inform you of any potential problems that need to be taken care of. Many buyers will also get “cold feet” if the inspection shows too many needed repairs on their report. By fixing these issues in advance, you can ward off these potential problems.  Also when in a “Hot Real Estate Market” some buyers will accept your Pre-Listing Home Inspection and waiver their own home inspection, simplyfying the closing process.

Having a Pre-Listing Home Inspection done prior to the buyer’s home inspection is a good way for you to ensure there aren’t any surprises later on in the home-buying process. If an inspection report turns up any serious issues, you have the chance to fix them before the buyer ever steps foot in your home.