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Make Sure Your Home Looks Its Best

Monday, November 20, 2017   /   by Meagan Henry

Make Sure Your Home Looks Its Best

Home Selling Tips


In our last blog post, I talked about how the expectations of today’s home buyers are higher than ever when it comes to the presentation of homes for sale. And that this certainly holds true for homes for sale in Georgetown. So, I decided to offer 5 essential tips for ‘staging’ your house when selling. Today, I’ll add five more nuggets of house-selling wisdom. Obviously, many of these tips would apply wherever you’re selling your home—in Alaska, Paris or wherever. But my experience is here in Georgetown over the years and when certain details are especially pertinent for selling real estate in our community, (like keeping windows clean for people checking out the views from your property) I’ll point those out.

Ok, so let’s get going and continue the list!

6. Don’t place your furniture directly against the wall.

This one may seem a little counter-intuitive, but bear with me. You want to make sure that your house looks as spacious as possible. Naturally, many people assume that you should clear out all of the furniture and push it toward the walls and that this will give you the largest looking space. In fact, having sofas and tables moved of the wall toward the interior of the room does more to open up the space and make it look expansive.

7. Finish unfinished projects.

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that leaving a project unfinished in your house is likely to cost you more in reduced price at selling than it is to simply take care of the project now. Seeing cracks in the driveway or flaked areas of external paint can hint strongly to home buyers that there’s more work to be done once the house is purchased. Not only can that knock down the price at sale, but it can be a psychological barrier to prospective buyers who don’t want to take on more work and dampen interest in the property altogether. I would say that for homes located in Georgetown, sun-related projects on the exterior are pretty regular occurring projects you want to make sure are taken care of.

8. Try playing some music.

I think some country works pretty well in Georgetown. But why not play some light (and certainly inoffensive) music when your home is showing? It can put everybody in a better, more relaxed mood. And that can never be a bad thing.

9. Have a pet procedure.

Believer it or not, not everybody loves pets. Crazy, I know. So if you have a beautiful Dalmatian or a lovable tabby, figure out how you’re going to handle controlling them when visitors are in the house. It certainly might not be possible to have your pets in a hotel for the length of time your house is showing, but you could consider having Bruiser in his outdoor pen during open house hours. Also keep in mind the smell of a pet can be a turn-off to many people. So make sure that if your pet is roaming your house when visitors aren’t there that you have enough time to thoroughly clean and freshen the appropriate areas before visitors arrive.

10. Clear away the clutter.

You should really pack up 90 % of your home. Clutter collects everywhere over the years you live in your house. You want to make sure that your home for sale looks like a model home for sale. This is probably one of the basic tenets of residential real estate. Make sure your property looks orderly and clean. Box away the CDs, books, even children’s toys and store them neatly in the garage, at a rental unit—or even with a friend. Neat and clutter-free is the name of the game.