5 Easy Steps to Prepare Your Home for Showings

chris.ha • January 4, 2020

With 2020 already under way, you might be considering selling your home, or maybe you have already listed it! But a big factor in selling your home is showing buyers the home. Below are 5 easy steps to prepare your home for showings. A great way to think of this is to realize, once your home is on the market, it’s like a product on the shelf. Do you go to the store and pick up items on the shelf that’s dusty and disorganized or the one that’s clean and conformed? You’ve got a way better chance at someone picking your house out of the bunch when it is clean, organized, and staged correctly! Make sure to discuss some of these things with your agent to get the best possible results.

Repairs

First of all things, what you’ll want to do is go around your home and fix all the little things you find throughout the house. You know that squeaky floorboard under the dining room table that you no longer think about? Fix it. Keep in mind, for a buyer, this is their biggest purchase of their life. When they come into your home, they’re going to look at every inch of your home to find something to drop the price. That’s just how people are when purchasing high ticket items such as a home.

The best way to take care of everything is to go through each room with a pen and a pad. Write down the smallest of things that you see. Is there a ding in the wall? Consider having it patched. Do light bulbs need to be changed? How about those closet door handles?

Take every little thing into consideration. Not to say you have to fix and replace every tiny little issue in your home, but you’ll at least want to be aware of the condition of each room and factor that into negotiations when a buyer submits an offer. This makes the negotiation process much easier, as you’ll be prepared for anything the buyer throws at you.

Trash, Sell, Donate

The best part about this step is it not only helps the buyer, but it helps you out down the road. First things first, go through each room again and completely tear it apart. Take everything out of every drawer, closet, and dresser and sort through it. You’ll want to create three piles. One to throw away, one to sell, and one to donate. You would be surprised how many things you can actually just throw away, instead of it taking up space in your U-haul or new home.

Next, get your second pile organized, and set up a garage sale or start selling things on Facebook Marketplace or apps like LetGo. Believe it or not, a lot of sellers can actually get a lump sum of cash for selling things they no longer want or need. You can use this cash for things like upgrading the home, paying towards closing costs, moving costs, etc.

Once you have sold all of the things people may actually want to buy, you should bag up all the clothes, toys, furniture, and whatever else you have and take them down to your nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army. There are so many people out there who need the things you don’t and would normally throw it away.

Declutter, Depersonalize, and Organize

Once you’ve gotten rid of everything you don’t need, it’s time to go through the things you do need! Take everything you kept and find a place for it. All of your little necessities such as toothbrushes/toothpaste, razors, q-tips, etc. and organize them inside a drawer. Throughout the home, you’ll ONLY leave necessities sitting out. Take all the personal items such as family photos, kid’s report cards on the fridge, and even signs or doormats with the family last name. Completely depersonalize your home. Buyers need to be able to visualize themselves in your home and it is very hard to do so when their are personal items all over the place. In fact, it will make the buyer feel more so like they’re intruding instead of home shopping.

When it comes to organizing, this can be huge. Organizing will not only help you when you’re on your way out, but will help the buyer see the opportunities the space of the home has to offer and how they will use it for their own personal items.

It’s easier said than done, but you need to officially detach your emotions from the home. Take the steps to emotionally remove yourself from the home and then proceed to start this process.

Cleaning Checklist

Once you’ve got everything situated, now comes the maintenance side of the process. Sure, you have the initial weekend long cleaning spree that has to happen in order to maintain all of this. Steam cleaning carpets and furniture, scrubbing the grout, dusting every inch, and more. But in order to keep your home this shiny, you need to have a daily checklist, which should look a little something like this.

Daily:

Odor Managemet
Sweep, Mop, Vacuum
Dusting countertops, shelves, etc.

Weekly:

Heavy Dusting
Scrubbing the floors/Steam Cleaning
Clean inside/outside of Windows and Window sill
Polish Faucets, Appliances, etc.

Enhance Appearance

Last but not least, in fact one of the most important things to do is enhance your curb appeal. A lot of times we get asked “What’s curb appeal?”. It’s exactly what it sound like, how appealing your home looks from the curb. Take the extra effort to maintain your lawn and garden. Make some arrangements to get that loose gutter fixed, or the shingles replaced. Do the little things most people wouldn’t expect to be done and you’d be surprised how many buyers appreciate that!

Since you’ve completely purged the inside of your home. Go ahead and take a trip on down to IKEA, Rooms To Go, or even Target. Pick out some home decor to spice up the inside of your home, and try not to personalize it too much while picking out what pictures or art work you want to put on the wall. Sometimes, it’s hard for people to detach and look at what other people may like or want.

At the Brown Home Group, if it’s is necessary, we will hire a staging expert to come in and stage your home. In case it is needed, they also offer to rent out their decor and furniture to make sure everything flows and you have enough to fill the space! You know those homes on HGTV that look “AMAZING” ? They all use staging experts! Consider hiring one for yourself, or contact us to get in touch with one.

Conclusion

Like we stated in the opening paragraph, your home is quite literally a product on the shelf. Treat it like one. Go the extra miles to do the repairs, make it appealing, help the buyers visualize it as their own. While your real estate agent is suppose to be the one marketing your home, if you don’t cooperate and make it marketable then it’s hard for them to do their job. Let us know if these tips helped!

Thanks for reading.

Written By:

Blaine Wyker

Brown Home Group @ Keller Williams Advantage II Realty

Resources:

https://jacofallthings.com/prepare-home-sell/

https://www.trulia.com/guides/staging-a-house/

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