5 Tips for Preparing Your Home for The Spring Market

With Spring right around the corner, the thought of selling your home could be at the forefront of your mind. Along with that, comes preparing your home for the market. Preparing your home for its entry into the real estate market can seem like a daunting task, you want to be putting time, effort, and money into preparations that will best benefit you as a seller! These 5 home seller tips will set you up for success as a seller in any real estate market!

For any additional home selling and preparation questions click my Connect With Me Link to schedule a Seller’s Consultation or to receive a free comparative market analysis on your home!

TIP #1: Declutter, depersonalize, and donate!

Every Realtor® you talk to will tell you “The Three D’s of Preparing Your Home For The Market”, but there is a reason for that. Decluttering, depersonalizing, and donating are a few simple ways that are cost effective and have a massive amount of return for a seller. Decluttering shelves, walls, closets, and garage space will help a buyer see how much square footage and storage space they would have in the house. Storage and space are two very common needs that buyers look for, so making it visible to the buyer’s eyes on how much room is in the home is important. 

Depersonalizing is hard, especially when you have family photos, awards, and momentums throughout your house. When selling your home you want the buyer wants to envision their family photos, awards, and momentums, not yours. So packing those away at the start is one way to help a buyer envision themselves in your home and see their belongings throughout it and it also is one less thing to pack away when you go under contract and start the moving process!

Donating. Donating is just as hard as depersonalizing and decluttering, if not harder. This takes time, as you have to sort through your belongings and find out really what you need while you’re moving and what you don’t.  A very simple way to do this is while you’re decluttering your closet, pantry, or garage, see what things you haven’t used in a while and ask yourself, “Will I be using this in the next month? If no, is it worth keeping?” This will help you put into perspective what can be donated and what you should be keeping and it will also help you knock out the other two D’s of preparing to list your home.

 TIP #2: Deep Clean

This is a key component to preparing your home for that market that often a lot of seller’s don’t do. It is super simple, cost effective, and has one of the biggest impacts while your home is on the market. Here’s why…

When you walk into a home the first thing you notice is the smell, right? So imagine this, you are a home buyer and you are walking into a home that you’re thinking of purchasing and the very first thing you are greeted with as you walk through the door is the a strong whiff of cat pee, or even cigarette smoke. That would make you want to walk right out of the door and not turn around, right? Going into a home upon first impression you’re greeted with smells that we as the homeowner who lives there on a daily basis are often blinded by and no longer notice, but the potential home buyer may notice them and could ultimately steer them away from putting in an offer.

The strongest and most safest bet is to deep clean, even if you don’t have pets and don’t smoke, still do a deep clean. This will help! This is also because buyers will also even notice how dirty your baseboard is, or how dirty your ceiling fan may be and often times when they see simple things not taken care of, they think the bigger items might not also be taken care of. So long story short, do a deep clean, it will best help you as seller and is cost effective!

TIP #3: Curb Appeal

This is another great cost effective item to check off your spring preparations list. Curb appeal is so important! Your potential buyers will make an impression on your home as soon as they drive up to the property. You don’t need to go all out and hire the town’s professional landscaper to lay down new mulch on your flower beds and cut your shrubs into fun shapes, this can be simple. This can be just up keeping your front lawn and making sure the grass isn’t over grown, pulling weeds out of the flower bed or maybe even planting some new flowers. Your home’s curb appeal should be at the top of your list of home preparations, but it does not need to be expensive.

TIP #4: Deferred Maintenance 

Deferred maintenance often sounds scary to many home sellers because they often see tons of dollar signs following that phrase, but this does not need to be expensive. Obviously the average homebuyer wants all of the brand new things in the home to make their lives easier, but if it is not financially feasible for you to obtain before listing your home, don’t worry about it!

Your deferred maintenance doesn’t need to be replacing your gas heating system with the brand new up-to-date energy efficient ones, it can be simpler than that. You can start with making sure all fo the lightbulbs in your home are working, fixing sticky door jams, cleaning out your dryer vent, or those projects you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t had the time to. These are simple tasks that can help you be set up for success for when it’s time for your home to come on the market in the spring.

With that said, if you do have some bigger ticket items that need to be done the time you spent working on some deferred maintenance tasks is a perfect time to get those fixed! Working on any deferred maintenance tasks will have a great return on investment when you are preparing your home for the market!

TIP #5: Refreshen Your Interior With Some New Paint

This is a super simple and often fun task to prepare your home for the market. Refreshing your home with some new paint is an awesome tip for any potential sellers. This will help give your home a more fresh, clean feel while doing a very minimal and cost effective task and is also often a win-win tactic when done right.

Just make sure when you’re refreshing with new paint you’re not painting your living room walls magenta or bright yellow. You want to be doing with the eye’s of a buyer. This is a very simple task that can be often overwhelming, but a simple white or neutral paint color will have the most return on your investment if repainting your interior walls is on your list of preparations. It gives buyers a blank slate, they’ll be able to envision their decor throughout the home and not have to worry about it matching wall colors and it will also make them feel like they have one less thing on their list of things to do to the home after they have purchased it.

I hope these 5 tips on home preparations for the spring market gave you a better idea on where to start! For more tips and seller advice my free Seller’s Guidebook is available for anyone interested! Click this link to receive a copy!

For any other Seller related questions you can click the Connect With Me Link to call me to schedule a Seller’s Consultation or to receive a complimentary Comparative Market Analysis!

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