Selling your home is about telling a story. But it has to be a short story. Anyone who has worked in real estate for more than a week will know exactly what this means. But anyone newer than that will have almost no idea. This is because showing your home is somewhat difficult.
In order to show your home off you need to make it look like it can be lived in, but it at the same time it needs to look like it has not been lived in. This is because it is critical that your home not look used. It needs to look open to customization, but not customized. This is because it needs to not look like it is overly specialized. Showing your home is a balancing act.
Many people need help with that balancing act. In order to aid in that, we have created this guide. Today, we will be showing you 5 strategies for showing your home for sale.
Emphasize the Location
We are starting with this strategy because it is probably the hardest one to implement. Most of the time, a big appeal of any home is going to be its geography: How close it is to certain schools, its access to certain roads, and the businesses those roads connect a person to.
How do you make these features part of your home? The answer will surprise you: You present a map of these things in the living room. Is that an obvious break from any décor you have in the same room? Yes, absolutely. It is such a break that it will not register.
This gets to one of the fundamental things about showing your house: If someone knows that something does not belong at all, they will not consider it part of the house.
Repaint the House
While this will be second nature to anyone in real estate, not everyone will think to do this. Repainting the house means refurbishing the paint job both internally and externally. It also means changing the paint out to a color that is more neutral, like beige or white.
Imagine you are viewing a house that is bright pink. The question of whether or not you want that house, or whether or not you want a house at all, are forced to co-exist with the question of whether or not you want a pink house. Even if that question is unimportant, it is still there.
Repainting a house like this makes it look new, fresh, and unobtrusive.
Repair the House
This tip is a little more obvious in theory. Its execution, however, tends to be a bit more esoteric. The thing about repairs is that no matter how handy you are at actually doing them, knowing which repairs are material to the price of your home is a skill unto itself.
In order to repair your home properly for being shown, you must first get it appraised. Appraisal cannot be done by anyone. It has to be a licensed appraiser that has no connections to you. They will go through your home and find where damage is and give you an itemized list of it.
With this list you will have a sharp idea of what needs to be fixed in your home and what it will take to fix it. Even better, this will raise the value of your home.
Windows and Doors
It is easy to take windows and doors for granted, but when something is wrong with them you will absolutely know. The thing you are looking to avoid is not just showing off a house with problematic windows and doors. You also do not want windows or doors to fail after you sell.
Or they should at least last for a while after you sell. The problem is that if a door falls off its hinges right after you hand over the keys to the house, your buyer is likely to sue you for an undeclared safety hazard. The same applies to windows, though they have aesthetic value.
You do not want your doors falling apart, nor do you want your windows looking dirty or scuffed. These are small details that are easy to overlook, but a prospective buyer will be looking at them much closer than someone who is living there, especially if they are looking for reasons that the price of the home should be lowered.
Make the Home Neutral
This line of thinking is not restricted to a certain room or component of the house. Instead, it should be applied to the whole presentation of the house. We mentioned that showing a home is all about telling a story. Well, this step is about leaving that story open ended from the start.
That means removing unique markings, paint, decorations, and furniture. Make sure anything specialized is taken out as well. Is there a swing set in the backyard? Take that out just in case the people who you show the home to think that it is unsafe, or they do not have or want kids.
In order to do this properly you really have to imagine that the people you are showing the house to are going to be offended by anything and everything. The assumption you should make is that the only thing they are not offended by is emptiness.
That means if you have a question as to whether or not something is appropriate, then the best course of action is to remove it. This will leave you with some blank spaces, but you can fill those blank spaces with things that will offend no one.
Conclusion
If you follow these five tips, then your home will be ready to show to anyone in no time. We have loads of tips like these, so if you need any help regarding the process of selling your house or the theories behind real estate in general, visit the website for more.