Indoor and Outdoor Cleaning
A thorough whole-house
cleaning really helps your home be more attractive to a buyer. A buyer will walk
through your home and make assumptions about how well you have maintained the
home, often based on how clean the home is. Don’t forget some of these easy to
overlook items:
Outside the front of your home: mow, rake, weed, and
trim.
Oil squeaky door hinges and wash the door/entryway windows.
Repair Broken or Malfunctioning
Items
Even minor broken items tell
a buyer that this home has not been well-maintained, and buyers tend to
overestimate the cost and effort necessary to fix a leaky faucet or broken door
closer. More and more home buyers are not mechanically inclined and look at the
easiest small fix-it project and think about how much it will cost for a
professional to fix this problem. Don’t forget some of these easy to overlook
items needing repair:
Doorknobs (interior and exterior), doorbells, locks, and
cabinet knobs.
Remove Personal Property
To Make Room Look Larger
Most homes have too many things in them, and it makes the house look small and lacking storage space.
Furniture, clothes, shoes, toys, boxes, and almost anything can cause clutter.
Visit a model home and notice how little furniture is displayed in the home.
Reducing the furniture and other things helps the buyer see your home better and
also makes it look larger. If possible, do not store all this extra furniture
and other stuff in your closets, as that makes your closets look small. Same
with your basement. Ideally, you will store the stuff away from your home at a
storage facility or friends house. If that is not possible consider storing it
in the garage. Don't forget these items that often create a cluttered
look:
Old or off-season coats, hats, and boots.
Wall hangings and posters.
Kitchen appliances (especially important because they obscure
counter space!)
Use Paint To Improve Home's Image
Painting is often recognized as the "improvement" project
that has the best impact on the price than any other work
you can do. Paint accomplishes two important goals for making
your home look its best:
It brightens a room, making it look bigger and fresher,
and
Paint makes a home look like it was better maintained
and that it needs less work by the buyer.
These key goals
are best accomplished by sticking to neutral colors (most
agents swear by off white) because that is what appeals to
the most people. One possible exception to this painting rule
is with woodwork in need of stripping, sanding, and refinishing.
Resist the temptation to paint it rather than the greater
work required by refinishing it. Often worn, unpainted woodwork
is better than freshly painted woodwork that would require
stripping to recover the original look of wood. Don't forget
some of these small painting projects that can really improve
the look of your home:
Front door, front storm door, front door frame.
Mailbox, exterior light fixtures (especially near the front
door).
Shutters, downspouts, gutters, and other exterior trim.
Any areas with stains from old problems that have been
corrected.
Projects To Avoid
Improvement projects rarely
pay for themselves. Consider a home improvement only if you have time, it
involves an important area of the home such as the view from the street, the
front door/entryway, the kitchen, or main bathrooms. The only exception to this
general rule is when you are "completing an image" that directly appeals to a
buyer. For example, say your home has an updated furnace, electrical, and
plumbing systems, but your roof will need to be replaced in less than a year. In
this example, you should consider a new roof because your home will be fully
updated and will appeal even to buyers that are afraid of doing updates
themselves.
