Advice to successfully sell your home fast.
Make Sure It’s Ready and Inviting
Start by making your home as cozy as possible, so the person that walks in gets a feeling that they could live there, after all, selling a home is all about appealing to people’s emotions. You want your prospective buyers to fall in love with your property.
- Up your curb appeal
Curb appeal is one of the fastest ways to sell a home and can help you sell your home more quickly, and often, for more money. The better the house looks from the outside the more people will actually stop and take a look instead of just driving by and the more people look around and walk around your home the more likely it is that someone will see it as their next home.
Curb appeal should not be overlooked: As the saying goes, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Make sure the front of the house is free of debris, the bushes are pruned and the grass has been cut. Also, add some potted plants on the porsche and by the front door to make buyers feel welcome.
Some easy updates that really improve curb appeal include touching up exterior paint. Painting the trim can be a quick way to really brighten things up without painting the whole house. Adding window flower boxes and installing a new mailbox are also great ideas if you have the budget. Adding nice looking mulch around shrubs and trees can really bring out the charm.
Spend time and give your landscaping a simple makeover by adding defining borders to your flower beds and adding a focal point. Block borders are popular, or you can outline your beds with small shrubs, flowers or grasses.
Add a focal point to the yard with a few larger plants as focal points but keep them in proportion to the size of your garden. You can also add some flowering plants to your garden as it will make your home much more inviting.
Show your buyers how they could use your home’s outdoor space all year round. How about adding a fire pit. Add some warm winter throws over your outside chairs to help bring color to the outside and to make it more appealing. Buyers love more living options and the outside is an ideal extra space.
- Invest in value-adding improvements
Figuring out which home improvements that will be a good investment can be daunting, and the costs can add up quickly. The key is to spend money on projects that will provide the most return on your investment. A garage door replacement, believe it or not, is the single most valuable investment that gives you the best bang for curb appeal when it comes to ROI. The average return on a new garage door is just under 94 percent.
Minor kitchen upgrades are also a wise investment. The heart of the home is the kitchen, that’s where people hang out, and many buyers will put a lot of weight on their buying decision. While a complete remodel or overhaul of this space can run into the tens of thousands, a minor update is where you can get the best return for your hard earned bucks. Resurfacing cabinets, replacing countertops, a fresh coat of paint or updating the fixtures are just a few things you can do.
Bathrooms are the second place that potential buyers value when making their buying decision. Updating a bathroom is another wise investment to get the most out of selling your home.
- Highlight the positive with professional photos
Did you know that most property buyers say that photos are one of the crucial things that helped them reach a buying decision?
Homebuyers spend approximately 70% of their buying efforts on just looking at photos online. The rest of the time And a very small amount of time actually reading the agent’s description of the house and the listing details.
Going ahead and spending a moderate amount of money on high-quality photography can go a long way toward helping you get a higher price. If the photos look sharp and crisp, it can translate into a higher sales price and you’ll sell faster, too.
Don’t take pictures of everything though. You may want to leave some things to the imagination when it comes to your home’s online listing. The goal of photographs is not to give everything away with online pictures, it’s to make a buyer want to see more or entice them to see it in person. You must be able to create curiosity enough for people to want to see the house in person, because that’s where the real magic happens.
- Stage your home
When it comes to home staging, there are two rules of thumb: less is more and keep it neutral.
It’s super important to make an impression right from the front door. Pay extra attention to the entry hall to make sure this area is staged properly. Repaint; place flowers; buy a new area rug, an impressive mirror or a dramatic piece of art, all work well to grab the attention of the prospective buyer.
Remove objects and visually clutter or can shrink a room, such as large ottomans or too much furniture or plants. Remove everything from the kitchen counters. And don’t forget to stage the deck or patio, especially if you can see it from inside the house.
Keep Your Home Clean. Spending time making sure every part of your home is clean is super important any time you want to sell. Keep floors clean and make sure all the personal family items are hidden away where people looking at your home can’t see them. And of course keeping the kitchen and bathrooms as clean as you can helps set the right tone.
- Remove personal items
This is something that should be obvious to anyone selling a home but sometimes it’s not. The goal of any showing is for the buyer to envision themselves living in the home and their own belongings in the space.
You love the family so you have photos, tons of photos. You think it’s wonderful to have family photos everywhere but when it comes to others that come to view your home, not so much. So, while family photos and other knick knacks might seem like they belong there, the prospective buyer doesn’t see it that way. It’s not that they don’t like people, it’s just that they get a certain impression that doesn’t allow them to get a picture in the buyer’s mind that they will be living there. This really does matter especially if you are still living in the home while you’re trying to sell it.
Buyers are thinking of their own furniture, where it will go and how it will fit in the house and they can’t get a good idea of arranging when there are other personal items lying around. It’s the house they came to see, not the personal items or the furniture that’s inside of the house. If buyers are distracted by the personal items, then chances are they won’t be able to see themselves living in the space and enjoying it themselves, and will not end up making an offer.
- Be ready to move fast
Once you’re ready and your property is listed for sale on the market, things can happen quickly. It’s important to be prepared to move ahead of time so that you can be as responsive as possible to the needs of potential buyers and the unusual offers they will hit you with.
Sellers who are slow in reaction time when an offer comes in or unresponsive can lose buyers. If the buyer feels that you are not serious about the sale of the home they are very likely to walk away, especially if there are a lot of homes on the market at the time.
- Use your head, not your heart
This is one of the hardest things to do is, try to remove emotion from the selling equation and see this as a simple real estate transaction. Your house is no longer a home but a product in the marketplace. Be clear on what timeline and items you may be willing to make concessions on if a potential buyer asks. It’s not unusual for prospective buyers to request discounts, credits or repairs, and it’s easy as a seller to take offense about this because of the emotional connection with the home.
It’s important to remember that the buyer usually doesn’t expect to get everything they ask for so just keep that in mind when a buyer has a request and weigh that it’s valid and fair, and offer something that makes sense. The cost to you not giving the concession can be minimal and outweigh the benefit that you’ll gain by selling your house fast. It can be expensive losing the buyer, putting the property back on the market, starting all over again so be thoughtful when looking at offers.
Taking the time to do a few of these things will create the environment that will make it very easy to sell your home and have a very smooth transaction.
Let BiggerEquity Make You a Cash Offer Today
At BiggerEquity, we make it easy for you to sell your house quickly. Just give us a call, and we’ll
be more than happy to make you a fast, fair cash offer on your house.
We understand how stressful the process of selling a home can be, so our team of
professionals will provide you with all the guidance you need in order to get the most out of your
sale.
We handle all the paperwork and legal fees, so you can rest easy knowing that your sale is in
good hands. Contact us today to get started—and get a real cash offer for your home!