7 tips to getting your house ready to sell
Thinking about putting your house on the market but questioning if your house is even close to being ready? Just follow these 7 steps to getting your house ready to sell and you’ll be in a good position to attract potential buyers, stand out on the open home day, and have punters wanting more (trust us we’ve done it before).
Below are the 7 easy steps to follow that we applied pre-listing our home that lead to a week on the market, our auction being bought forward with over 60 people through the door with just three open homes!
Read through and see our home here.
#1 Research the market
Sizing up your competition is important. Watch live auctions and see what homes similar to yours are going for, go to open homes and see what you like about them compared to yours and take notes! I made a spreadsheet with houses in similar school zones, bedrooms, and section sizes to ours and then watched their live auction and recorded their sale price. You could engage your agent at this point or do your own research before involving them. Using tools like the trademe property app or homes.co.nz helps you gauge pricing and what’s on the amrket
#2 Identify your buyer
In marketing, we call this a “persona”, identify who your buyer is and what matters to them. If they are an early-thirties couple, you’ll assume they may want a nursery in the near future, somewhere fenced for a dog but close to local hot spots and a garage to keep their bike safe. Knowing and understanding your buyer will help you make decisions on what you need to update and put your energy and money into.
#3 Touch-ups vs major renovations
Now that you’ve done your homework and know who this home will appeal to you should have a good idea of what you need to do cosmetically and functionally to your house. If you are playing in the first home buyers market, it may just be a bit of paint here and there so they can make it their own. Look at giving things like your skirting boards, fences, deck, and patios a touch-up, replace light shades, and spruce up the gardens.
#4 Declutter and then again!
Take this one seriously, take out pieces of furniture that don’t need to be there like boxed shelving and even dressers and plants. Buyers want to see how they can move into your space, they can’t do this with nanas suitcases stacked in the corner. Take things out of your shower, clear the window sills and desk. A good idea is getting a fresh set of eyes through your home to ‘clutter spot’. Get some affordable plastic storage containers and put them all in your garage while you sell.
#5 Time to clean
This one goes without saying. Spot clean your carpets, scrub your wooden flooring and make sure every corner of your house is spotless. People don’t buy grubby homes unless it’s a complete gut! If you are no good at deep cleaning, hire someone because it really does stand out.
#6 Choose your scent
We put a diffuser by The Aromatherapy company in every room (vanilla and cinnamon) so the scent was consistent throughout the house and then gave it a small room spray with coconut and lime before the open home. We had friends that attended the open homes that commented on how nice it smelled. It’s important to not overdo the scent because it can look like you’re making something like a pet smell or dampness.
#7 Staging
Staging comes at a price but if you have the opportunity to do this it makes the imagery look amazing and maximises the space in all areas. Choose a stager that has staged homes similar to yours so they get the styling right. Feel free to brief them heavily on what you want too and they will make it work. Someone like In-House Style will see you right.
