5 Easy Home Improvements that Add Value

5 Easy Home Improvements that Add Value

Let’s talk about getting your house ready to sell in today’s crazy market. There are a lot of people who were thinking about selling for quite a long time, who didn't come on the market. And now they're saying, okay, I really want to take advantage of this market. I want to prepare my home to sell, what do I do? I'm going to outline this for you.  Here are my five tips on how to prepare your home to sell.

Today’s blog post will focus on the top five tips to prepare your home for sale.

Tip #1)The most common question that I get asked is in today’s crazy market does it even matter what I do to my house? It's going to sell no matter what, right. Well, you're probably right. However, the next question should be, how do I get the most amount of money for my house and how do I eliminate risk so that I don't assume my house is going to sell and then find out at the last minute, that it doesn't. So the best way to counter both of those, is to get the most amount of buyers to offer on the home to have competition on your home. Doing that allows you to pick and choose who it is that you want to work with. Whether it's more money or elimination of risk, you might even be able to get both. So, the next few tips we'll talk about are going to focus on how to increase the number of buyers on your home.

Tip #2) The biggest stress point about getting your house ready is just trying to figure out where to begin. It's usually, uh, mountain of tasks, or at least it feels like a mountain of tasks to get your home ready for market. So where should you start?  Probably the first place to start is to talk to your local real estate advisor. Your local real estate advisor can kind of direct you in terms of what's really important. And what is it that are looking for locally. Now, the other place that you can start is probably with your “honey do” list. All of those things that you look around in your home, we call them “deferred maintenance”, all those things that you've been saving up a list for maybe the handyman to come in and fix, or maybe your husband to fix the “honey do” list. All of those items are great items to start with because more than likely they're going to be things that buyers will come in and look at and they say, oh wow, let's just use the example of the hole in the wall. “There's a hole in the wall, I wonder what else this seller hasn't been keeping up with in their home?”. I should probably start looking a little more deeply before I write an offer because I'm concerned about the lack of maintenance and deferred maintenance in this house. So, in order to avoid that buyer thinking or going down that trail, you want to make sure that you've eliminated most of those things. So they don't start looking for the, I call it “the what if factor”. They add a line item in there for the “what if there's another problem”?

Tip #3) What is most important thing to do? I get asked this question a lot by sellers.  “What's the most important out of all these things for me to do?” I would say that the most important thing is show off what you got!  The product that you have here is a house you need to be able to see every inch of it, so declutter your home, so you can see the floors, you can see the walls and people can see the dimensions. What I've done in the past is with a seller (who maybe questioned this concept), we took professional photos of their dining room with the rug underneath the dining room table, then we took another photo with the rug removed from the dining room table.  Sure enough the picture of the dining room table that didn't have the rug felt significantly larger and we therefore did get more traffic and more showings. Keep in mind, that buyers decide whether or not to see a home based upon what the photos look like. It's really your first showing with the professional photos. So we need to declutter in order for the photographs to come out well for your online showings.

Perfect so that we can get that buyer in there for that 2nd showing, be it an open house or a private showing.

Tip #4) My favorite advice to give to sellers is to capitalize on what you have. In other words, take a look around to your house. You probably have been thinking about maybe remodeling a room or redoing a bathroom. Maybe it's even a kitchen makeover that you've been considering. Those are things that a buyer will probably appreciate in your home. So after 23 years of helping sellers to sell their home and maximize their returns, it's never been easier than it is now to capitalize on what you have.  At Compass, we can help you get equity out of your home in order to invest it into your home for the sale process. Usually people can make anywhere from 150% to 300% of their investment.

So if you invest the equity in your home, you will get it back out on the other side. In addition to making that extra money on the home, you're also creating a home whereby there will be more buyers helping you to eliminate risk and get more money.

Tip #5) The most difficult thing for sellers to do in this market is to de-personalize their space. Keep in mind, we're trying to get the most amount of buyers, which starts with the most amount of eyeballs. We're trying to get the most amount of offers on a home to eliminate as much risk as possible in order to do that, we really need to convert this home (that you've got so many memories in), into a product. This product is what buyers are going to walk in, they're going to envision THEIR child's artwork on the wall. They're going to envision their family photos on the wall. We really need to de-personalize the space, so that more and more buyers can feel themselves living in the home. When you're trying to de-personalize your space, make sure that you keep in mind, you're moving anyways. So you're either going to toss it, give it away or pack it. Just keep the bare minimum at home while you're selling your home.

I hope these tips have have helped you as you prepare to sell your home. If you'd like some more information or maybe some idea about property values, feel free to reach out.