Selling your house is one of the most stressful times of your life, but it’s something many people do every year. It’s even more difficult when you need to sell your house fast. No matter the reason for selling, you can make your home sell easier by increasing its marketability. Ultimately, you can decrease your time on the market and attract strong offers at the same time. Here’s how.
Deep Clean and Declutter
Before people can determine whether or not they can move into a home, they need to visualize themselves in it. Having a home that’s unclean and cluttered will force many homebuyers to look away. Selling your home requires photos being taken of your home to attract people to come for a tour. If the photos don’t look good, you won’t attract many qualified buyers.
You can easily declutter by storing your stuff away from the home to make it look more clean and attractive to buyers. You should also deep clean your entire home, which means getting on your hands and knees cleaning the floors, baseboards, walls, and more.
Have a Strategy
When you list your home, you have a few options. You should ideally work with a licensed real estate agent or REALTOR as they will know how to properly market your house to the target buyer, and ensure the negotiations are carried out correctly.
Hiring a Real Estate Agent
Hiring a professional means you’re working with someone who does all of the work for you to get quickly sell your house. Realtors streamline prep work like marketing, promoting, ensuring the target buyers know about your property, ad listings, negotiations, and paperwork.
Other Ways to Sell Your Home
While selling your home yourself or working with an agent are the two most typical routes to take when selling your house, there are other ways.
- Selling to a developer
- Selling at auction
- Selling to a flipper
Price Correctly
Selling a home within the desired time frame is difficult, even in a sellers’ market. When many buyers are competing for homes, selling your house quickly isn’t always a guarantee. However, you can make it easier by competitively pricing your home. Overpricing leads to more time on the market, which means you’ll likely be selling at a lower price by the time all is said and done.
Pricing your home lower than comparable homes in the area can drum up interest and cause a bidding war, which can ultimately increase the price of your home. However, the success of that strategy will depend on your local real estate market.
When you price your home, consider what buyers are looking for. For example, if homes in your area are usually priced at $500,000, you can choose to list your home for $499,000 to intrigue buyers looking for a home under $500,000. If you price higher than that, it may not show up in those search results.
Have a Price Reduction Timeline
Work with your REALTOR to establish expectations about the market and pricing. Before you post your home listing, make sure you have a timeline planned for lowering your price if you don’t receive offers. Of course, you can always choose the amount to be lowered later, which can change depending on the feedback you get from showings. However, you should always have a date in mind so you can act on it if you don’t get any offers.
Remember, the longer your home is on the market, the lower your chances will be to sell it at listing price.
Sales Incentives
If you know selling your home is going to be difficult, you may want to consider sales incentives for buyers to sweeten the pot. These incentives can be:
- Upfront repair/improvement costs
- Paying buyers’ closing costs
- Offering to include appliances
Take Care of Repairs
Some home sellers choose to go big and renovate their homes. However, most sellers don’t have the funds or time to handle such a big responsibility. While you don’t have to do anything major to your home, you should take care of repairs. These can include:
- Repainting
- Fixing loose tiles and floorboards
- Repairing door handles
- Repairing leaky faucets
If possible, you can also consider minor upgrades to make your home look better during showings. These can include:
- Fresh paint inside or outside
- Installing new kitchen cabinets
- Updating light fixtures
- Purchasing newer appliances
Making your home more appealing on the inside and outside can help you make a good first impression with buyers. After buyers see your ad, they’ll want to come to check out the home for themselves. Staging is important because it allows buyers to visualize themselves living in the home.
Staging
Before you stage a home, you’ll need to pack up some of your belongings. This allows buyers to look at the house and not get distracted by all your personal items. Then, with proper staging, you can define spaces and make rooms look larger. It’s typically best to hire a professional staging company that will bring their own furniture and decor. They will then arrange it in ways that highlight your home’s features to make it look like a place buyers would be interested in. Staging companies can provide a DIY summary that you can implement according to your timeline using your things, they can provide pricing for bringing in decor, artwork and furniture as needed. If your house is empty, a staging company will provide an estimate or pricing proposal to furnish primary areas of the house, and add in other areas if needed. It is important that you give the best first impression to buyers online and in person.
Curb Appeal
While the home’s interior is important, many would argue the exterior is just as important, if not more so. Before any buyer steps foot inside the house, they are presented with the exterior. This is their first impression of the home, and initial thoughts matter when someone is buying a home.
The exterior of your home should look inviting and tidy. You don’t have to hire a professional landscaping company to help you, but you can take matters into your own hands with these tips:
- Trim the hedges
- Clear walkways
- Clean windows
- Replace broken lights
- Repaint your front door
Selling Your House Requires Work and Flexibility
While we all wish we could sit back and let our house sell itself, that’s never going to be the case. Selling your home takes work, even more so if you’re selling your home without the help of a realtor. If you are using a realtor, make sure you follow their advice while using your best judgment so you can sell your house easily and without stress.
Flexibility will also be important. For example, if you want to sell your house quickly, you’ll need to be flexible with showing times, pricing, and more so you don’t have to deal with months of stress if your house doesn’t quickly sell.
Matt Casadona
Matt Casadona has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Psychology. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy and enjoys San Diego life, traveling, and music.