10 tips when selling your home…
1.Make an impression
Prospective buyers make up their minds about your house even before they get out of the car. To ensure they have the right idea, clean up your yard, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, and sweep driveways and porches. Get out the rags and cleanser and spend 30 minutes scouring your front door, porch, railings and steps. Then tuck away all your recycling cans and bins at the back of the house.
2. Unclutter
Clutter eats equity, So purge your closets, empty cupboards, box up small appliances. Rent a storage locker to keep what you want, then toss the rest. Take some books off the shelves, reduce the number of CDs or DVDs, pare everything down.
3. Impersonal works
You want buyers to imagine themselves living in your home, not to feel like a guest in it. So stash anything connected to your family or personal interests. Hide your son’s hockey trophies, store family photos, remove all traces of day-to-day life. If someone goes into the bathroom, and the rim of the tub is covered with shampoo bottles while people’s toothbrushes are lying around the sink, it’s hard for that person to imagine that this could be his or her bathroom. The buyer becomes very conscious of being in someone else’s environment. That won’t get you an offer.
4. Keep it fresh
There’s nothing worse than stepping into a house that smells of smoke and pet odors, The easy solution is to keep your windows open for 10 minutes a day. This strategy works better than deodorizers, since a lot of people have allergies to artificial room fresheners. The oldest trick of all? Leave chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. The smell does wonders to help buyers bond with your home.
5. Declare war on grime
Cleanliness helps put a buyer’s mind at ease since it suggests that you’ve probably taken good care of your residence in other ways as well. So clean everything: walls, door handles, light fixtures and pantry cupboards. You can hire a professional cleaner to scour the inside of your home and a contractor to powerwash windows, walkways, eavestroughs and pathways. A good powerwashing contractor I use is Master Sealer, they service much of the GTA and surrounding areas.
6. Hire a handyman
Dripping faucets, cracked tiles and mouldy caulking around the bathtub can knock thousands of dollars off the price of your home. Remember, sometimes its the little things that count.
7. Color it up
Your single best investment may be a fresh coat of paint in key areas of your home. Paint your front door and put some urns with brightly colored flowers on your front step or just inside the entryway, Those things make a house seem cared for, different and important.
8. Reduce furniture
An easy way to create a sense of space is to get rid of some furniture. Moving a sofa and end tables into storage can give a small room some much-needed breathing space. So too can storing the table and chairs that normally sit in your kitchen, piled high with mail, magazines, books and groceries.
9. Light me up
The brighter and sunnier a space, the easier it is to sell. Start by investing in a good window-cleaning service. Clean windows let in as much as 30% more light than grimy ones. Then thoroughly clean the shades on your light fixtures, change light bulbs and add floor lamps if an area seems dim. Dump those energy-saving 60-watt bulbs and go with higher wattage lights for maximum illumination. Finally, when it comes time to show your home, make sure all the lights are on. Hallways especially should be lit, When those are dark, it gets depressing for buyers going from room to room.
10. Add a touch of humanity
A couple of planters on your front porch, a vase of flowers on your dining room table, even a simple rose in a bud vase can warm up a room. This is where you can let some of your creativity show through. You want to get away from making rooms feel dull and sterile, flowers and plants are good for that. Candles help, too.
If you are thinking about selling your home for top dollar, please visit http://www.johnnyloprete.com