All right. In today’s article, you will learn my seven tips when selling your home. The first tip and you’ve probably heard of this one but are to clean your home. Make sure your home is really clean. I looked at a lot of different properties when I was interested in purchasing a property, and some of them were super filthy. It was super disgusting. And just walking in there and looking around and thinking, this place is super, super dirty.
I cannot even live here. And while some people can overlook the mess, a lot of people just can’t get over that. So make sure you are cleaning everything. You’re wiping down your countertops, you’re mopping, you are sleeping, dusting, anything you can think of to make your home look a little bit cleaner. It will make it a lot easier to sell your home.
One of the things in particular that I did when I was selling my property was to go into the furnace room and wipe down the top of the furnace and the water heater. It gets super dusty in that room and a lot of people forget about it. But if it is clean in there, then people aren’t thinking, oh, wait, how old is this home? It is super dusty. There’s a layer of dust in here and it helps them think, oh, they really take care of the place.
They like it clean and it’s probably not super bad and they probably take care of the things inside of their home. So look around your house. Dust off the ceiling fans, dust off the light fixtures. Also, some people will open your cabinets. So make sure nothing is going to fall out of your cabinet.
Comment below and tell me what you think. The most important thing is that you should clean in your house when you are getting ready to sell your home. I’m curious to know. And the second thing that you want to do when you are getting ready to sell your home is to declutter your home. It kind of goes along with cleaning, but you want to make sure that there aren’t a lot of knickknacks on all of your shelves or just random items sitting everywhere near the couches.
So just take a look throughout your whole house. Just walk through and think, OK, what can I kind of clean up? What can I get rid of? And just box those items up if you still want to keep them and put them in the garage or even in the back of your car just so that your house is very clean and doesn’t feel crowded or cluttered. It will make it a nicer experience for potential buyers walking through the home not to feel that they are suffocating or that there’s too much stuff in the home and then think oh, this home isn’t very big, or even think that it’s not really clean because there’s just so much stuff everywhere.
And the third point is to get rid of any personal items that you might have in the home. So just do personalize your home. For example, if you have family photos hanging on the wall or on your shelves, you’ll want to take those down so that people can visualize themselves living in your home, instead of thinking oh, I’m walking through someone else’s home. And I did this when I was getting ready to sell. I had some pictures out of my nieces and nephews and my friends and I, so I took all of those photos down and just put them in a box and put them under the stairs in the storage room.
And the fourth thing you want to do when you are getting ready to sell your home is to fix any little maintenance items that you have been putting off for a while. Maybe you have just some light bulbs that are out or maybe there is a face plate cover that goes over the plugs, maybe one of those is broken. Or even if they are white or cream if they don’t really match, or if there is a door handle that’s loose or lines that are broken, whatever it might be, just fix those little items. And for me, there were some little marks on the walls. For example, when my roommates left, they had left little white marks on pictures that were hanging up.
And so I went around and just painted those little spots so there wasn’t a big white spot showing on the wall. Just make sure to fix all of those items so the potential buyer isn’t thinking oh, I’m going to need to fix so many things in this home. They can just think oh, it’s really clean in here, it feels nice and there’s not a lot of things wrong with it. And point number five is to make your home feel lighter and brighter, you’ll want to open your curtains. When you are showing the place, open your blinds.
And if your house is a little bit darker, think about getting some lighter curtains or even just taking down the curtains if you have blinds underneath or getting a light-colored rug to put over the dark carpet. Just do what you can to make the house feel brighter. And also when you are going to show the house, you can leave the lights on in the house. That’s what I did most of the time when we had showings, I just would turn on the lights, especially in the basement where it is darker and they have to walk down a little dark hallway. So I just flipped on the lights and made it feel brighter in the basement.
And that way they weren’t touching all of the light switches either. So it just had a more welcoming feeling and it just made the house feel brighter. And speaking of changing out the light bulbs, make sure that you have all of your light bulbs working. And I would recommend going with an Led light bulb that is a little bit brighter just to give that brighter feeling. And then you could also say that your home has been updated with Led lights, which are more efficient.
And that’s what I personally did. I had most of the lights already changed to LEDs. And number six is to have a nice curb appeal. And what that means is when someone is pulling up to your house, when they look at it, they want to not see all of the overgrown bushes or lots of leaves on the porch or just having it feel kind of dirty or grungy. You just want it to look nice and welcoming because that’s the first thing they are going to see when they pull up to the house is the outside curb appeal.
So the nicer that looks, then the more excited they are going to be to come into the home. And if it is, then the fall time is like it was for me. There were a lot of leaves on the walkway, so I made sure and swept those off. And I also had a little planter with gerbera daisies and they were still alive luckily, or I would have gotten rid of that planter, but I just had that placed right next to the door. Another thing you can do if you have a worn-out welcome Matt, you can replace that. You just want it to feel as welcoming as possible. And another thing I did was wash my front door. It was pretty dirty and I had never washed it. And when I washed it, I thought, oh wow, even I want to enter my house now. It was so much cleaner.
You’ll want to take a look and just think, okay, how can I make this home look nicer from the outside? Do I need to trim back the bushes? Do I need to paint a little bit? What is it that I can do to make it feel more welcoming? And then point number seven, the last one is to make sure that you have really good pictures when you are going to post them online. And I personally use a real estate agent. My sister is my real estate agent. She is amazing. But she had a photographer come out and take pictures of my home. Because when people are looking for a home to buy, they’re going to look online most of the time.
Some people may just drive through neighborhoods looking for the for sale signs, but a lot of people are going to look online and what they are going to see is the pictures you are taking of the home. So you really want to make sure that you have really, really good pictures because if the pictures don’t look great, they’re not even going to come to look at the home and make sure when you are taking those photos that everything is cleaned up and you have your toilet seats put down. I have seen pictures online where the toilet seat is up and I’m thinking why wouldn’t you put that down? Anyway, that’s just a little side note and even it bothers my sister too, so we are on the same page that way. But just make sure everything is clean and there is no clutter around and it is light and you can even do a little video tour of the home.
