5 Simple Things To Do To Make Your Home More Appealing To Buyers

If just the prospect of readying your house for home shoppers is keeping you up at night, you’re not alone. It’s a daunting prospect for many reasons. You love the place, and it is filled with memories. You count on your neighbors and aren’t sure you’re ready to move away from them. But life moves on and you’re about to do just that.

What can you do to make certain that visitors see your home in the best light possible? We offer 5 simple actions you can take on your own, each of which has the potential of making your abode stand out from the crowd.

Tip #1: Clean like your life depends on it
That’s no exaggeration. Home sales often depend upon first impressions and strangers are quick to react to smells, wall blemishes and disarray that you take for granted because you’ve lived with them so long. Hate to clean? No worries. Turn the job into a party by inviting friends and family over with their mops, buckets and gloves AFTER you have purged closets and tossed items into one of three boxes: Keep. Throw. Donate.

Reward everyone on your crew with good food, beverages and don’t forget desserts. Just don’t put anything edible out until the job is done! Not up for burdening your friends with the task? Hire a cleaning service or recruit college students eager to make money. Of course, if you love to clean, forget all of these ideas, do the job yourself — and don’t forget to take yourself out for dinner when the job is done.

Tip #2: Get your war paint on
You’re competing in a battle against other homes on the market (the enemy) and rewards are big, which is why fresh coats of paint added to every wall within your battle zone can result in lots of bang for your small investment. Painting walls is especially important if you’ve used some “off the wall” colors.

Another party is in order: a paint party. Red walls your teen insisted upon require the biggest cover-ups. You’ll get more offers if you paint walls in hues that run the gamut from whites and off-whites to ecru. If your teen gets petulant, tell her can paint her next bedroom purple once you get moved. She may be so enthused, she volunteers to join both your cleaning and painting parties.

Tip #3: If there’s water in the room, spruce it up
If you follow home sale trends you already know that kitchens and bathrooms are usually the biggest home sale drivers. It’s easy to see why: Both are essentials that must be attended to in order to sell in a reasonable amount of time. Give your cabinets face lifts by stripping/re-staining them or paint them.

Find toilets, sinks, shower heads and faucets plus fittings at discounters and upgrade cabinets with new hardware. Old appliances needn’t be tossed out if they still work. Revive your ‘fridge with coats of epoxy paint. Finally, don’t discount new countertops. They are room transformers and products on today’s market look exactly like stone, marble and granite but are dramatically less expensive than the real thing.

Tip #4: Shine a light on it
Did you know that poor lighting can be the reason a home shopper leaves a property without touring all of the rooms? Wimpy lighting can make a room look dark, shadowy and foreboding, leading browsers to wonder what homeowners are trying to hide. From floor lamps and ceiling fixtures and from sconces to table lamps, invest in energy-saving bulbs with the highest wattage so interior tours reveal every lovingly-cleaned and re-painted foot of space that you have worked so hard to rehabilitate.

Tip # 5: Don’t curb your enthusiasm!
Next to updated bathrooms and kitchens, curb appeal is critical. Home shoppers turned off by a property that looks like it hasn’t been painted since Eisenhower was in office are not shy about driving right by without stopping. Factor in uncut grass, broken fence sections, sadly ignored plant beds and yard toys galore and muster your patience. An offer could be a very long time coming.

Everything about your home’s exterior look matters. Broken driveway concrete. Exterior lighting. Yard disarray. Statuary that once made your home look like a showplace is now home to headless gnomes and worse. What does this say about you? “I really do not want to sell my house.”

Not to worry. Realtors taking home shoppers on tours are happy to move on to the next place on their lists, so make sure your home’s exterior is so inviting, prospective buyers can’t wait to get inside!