Getting My House Ready for Buyers

Hi A.,
I'm an interior designer and I have some tips on my website that might be helpful in getting your home ready to sell. http://kgard.com/selling.aspx Also, you'll get the most for your money if your kitchens and baths are up to date so you may want to make your kitchen a priority. If you have small closets (which I know alot of Clintonville houses do) you should clean them out as much as possible to give the impression of more closet space. Best of luck!

Hi,

I work in the field, as do most of my family. You have gotten a lot of good advice. One thing I wanted to add is this: a lot of homeowners make the mistake of redoing the home the way THEY would want it, but that can sometimes be a bad idea. The key is to stay neutral. There is nothing like a nice coat of paint, so make sure the walls are in a neutral color. Also, as others have said, declutter! Pack away things you won't immediately need, and make the home as simple looking as possible (not a lot of furniture, nicknacks, pictures, papers, etc). Also, believe it or not, the number one selling point in a home is a kitchen, so if yours need updating, go with the kitchen. You can most definitely ask for a 24 hour notice on showings.

A.,

I've never had any experience selling my house, but I have a friend who is a Realtor (she works for King Thomson/Coldwell Banker) and she is really good at staging houses and yes she recommends that you pack up most of your personal items during the selling process so that you can stage your home. She says that you need to remember that when people come to see your house it's not your stuff they want to see but the potential for their stuff in the space. Anyway if you haven't already decided on a Realtor I can give you her number - she's really good.

Good Luck,
M.

Hi!
I hope you're ready for a bumpy ride. Selling your house is probably ranked up there with one of the most stressfull life events. We went thru this last summer. We had a great agent that gave us lots of staging advice that i can pass on to you. (our house sold in 28 days) Starting with the kitchen, clear off the counters and pack away what you don't use. Organize the cabinet shelves...buyers peek into them! Walls; Take down most of your family photos and make your house look generic. Fresh paint or do touch-ups. We also cleared out clutter and filled lots of rubbermaid bins to put into storage. Ask a friend or relative if you can borrow some of their basement space til your house is sold. Organize and declutter your closets and buy new towels for your bathroom to put out at showings. I bought a big Yankee candle that i would burn when i knew there was going to be a walk thru that day. Stick to a simple scent...nothing to floral. I had vanilla. I also steam cleaned my carpets myself. And before showings make sure your house is put together, neat and tidy. It is hard if you have kids and lots of toys. Find a way to hide those toys.
Lots of Luck and patience!
As for showing your house with a small child, make your agent aware of nap time so that agents won't be able to show at that time. A 24 hr. notice is usually standard. Showings usually last about an hour, so pack a "goody" bag for your little one and have somewhere to hang out.
K.

I just sold my house and miraculously in 7 days. We did some updates and the biggest ones that I could recommend are the colors of the walls. Nothing to bold because a lot of people cannot see past that and they see it as something that they have to do as soon as they move in. We moved some of the big furniture into storage and moved some furniture around to other rooms.
For showings we made sure that we had 24 hours notice so we could pick up after our 2 year old and also pick up the stuff that we had or stuff it in a drawer of furniture and then we had towels in the bathrooms that we used for only the showings.
We priced our house on the lower end because of the market because that was when we would get the most potential to get as many people as possible. It worked because 5 days after it was on the market we had 3 people go through and one with an offer.
As little clutter as possible, under beds is a great place to hide stuff, or the back of your car.
Good luck

Hi A.,

My husband, son and I just moved back to Columbus this year and sold our Condo in Fla. before comming. We closed about 4 weeks after going in the market, with about 3 other condos for sale in our same complex, and I can honestly said that what I think did it was the fact that we rented a storage space and got a lot of the clutter out of the house, so all the buyers saw was our furniture in a ample, clean, CLUTTER FREE house.
We did change the floor at the entrance because it was cracking and a few small cosmetic changes in the masterbadroom, a good cleaning, nicer towels and stuff like that, but over all we didn't do much but de-clutter.

Good luck,

Dione