Selling Your Home in 12 Easy Steps Step #7

Selling Your Home in 12 Easy Steps, “Step #7”

Preparing the Inside of Your Home For Sale.  

We have gone through the outside of your home, now we step inside your home to review and stage it to sell.   Most home owners live in their homes and do not maintain the inside of their homes in buyer showing condition.  By this, I mean, we enjoy our homes.  Magazines, newspapers, books may adorn table tops.  Small families and singles that use dishwashers do not run them everyday.  The tendency is to have a full load and accumulate a few days of dirty dishes inside the dishwasher.   Laundry is the same way.   Households with small children have toys and drawings pasted about.

When we prepare the inside of our homes for an open house, we start at the front door.  What do you see when you first step inside the foyer?  If you have an open floor plan this can be simple to see.  What you get used too and what makes a home sell may be two very different things.  Many people have to items in their closets.  Open the entry closet and look inside.  Do you have any space to hang guest coats.  Is this closet packed full, including the vacuum cleaner?

“Gary White  is the broker/owner of Flexit Realty, Grand Rapids Michigan.  He is an accredited Home Stager, his insight and expertise in home sales spans over a decade, at a high level of performance within the real estate industry.”

Does your foyer need painting, flooring need repaired,cleaned or walls painted, trim redone?

Preparing Your Home To Sell in 12 Easy Steps

Clean and paint to make your entrance fresh creating a smile on the faces buyers?

Each room must be viewed with a critical buyer’s eye to detail.  This is where we take advantage of competition by cleaning and staging your home for sale.

1. Foyer, check the front closet, make sure it has open space with extra hangers.
2. Check flooring, woodwork, trim, walls, paint and repair if needed.
3. Living Room, can you see a flow or reason for your traffic patterns?  Can you walk through the living room in a free non obstructed manor?  Do you have too much furniture or too large?  Do you have too many books, magazines or other materials?  Is your paper or magazine rack overflowing?  Do your carpets or floors need cleaned, repaired or updated?
4. Dining Room, if your dining room has a large table, can buyers easy move around the room or is the dining room overpowering? Remove a leaf in the table if possible.  Make sure you do not have too many chairs, side tables or knick knacks, taking up space.  Open the room, so buyers can visualize their furniture fitting the room.
5. Kitchen, look at cabinet space, junk drawers, remove extra bags, store them in the garage.  Clean storage areas under the sink, clean sinks, cabinets, drawers and make sure your pantry is ready to be viewed. Besides the living room and dining room needing to be the right size for home buyers, the kitchen and bathrooms are also critical to selling your home.  If these rooms are right people will live with an undersized family room or living room before compromising on smaller or less functional kitchens and bathrooms are difficult. Check flooring, counter-tops and have appliances that work!
6. Bathroom(s), make sure each room sparkles but the bathroom must be exceptionally clean, including showers, tubs and cabinets.  If you must, buy new bath and hand towels for showing purposes.  Accent your bathroom and other rooms so buyers know they found the right home for them!
7. Bedrooms, closets is the number one area in every bedroom where I find too many cloths, shoes, ties and laundry baskets sitting out.  Remove all off season clothing and pack them away.  Make sure your closets are open and roomy.  Look at floor coverings, drapes and other accents.  Review furniture and beds make rooms look large with open space.  Don’t let large furniture overwhelm a room.  Store a dresser if you need too.
8. Basements, Attics all have to be looked at and cleaned.
9. Garages, I usually put the garage with outside preparations but I should mention the garage one more time.  Do not fill your garage with storage boxes after cleaning out your house.  While selling your home rent a small storage unit.  The cost of a small storage unit is nominal, a few dollars a month and could make the difference in selling or not selling your home.

Selling your home is a family activity.  If you do not have a family invite friends over to help you.  Remember no to give them food or drinks until the work is done!  This is a great way to get the word out, you are going to sell your home!  Word of mouth advertising works, when selling your home!

“FREE SELER’S CHECKLIST”
Receive a “FREE Seller Checklist”, if you are in the Grand Rapids Real Estate Market and considering selling your home.  Expose your home to a wider range of buyers using today’s most up to date real estate technology and selling methods.

Call Flexit Realty: 616-784-2360
Email: GaryWhite@FlexitRealty.com
Website: www.FlexitRealty.com

In case you missed any of the steps to selling your home already published active links are listed below.