[AUTOSAVED] A Little Effort Can Sell Your Home

Selling and buying a home can be the largest financial transaction of our lives. So why do we treat it so lightly. When selling our cars, we replace the worn tires, fix any mechanical defects, and vacuum and clean inside and out. But that’s only the start of it. Once we’ve done all that it’s off to have the car certified and, if necessary, e-tested. You can only guess how much all that is going to cost, but my, doesn’t the car look great?

Now it’s time to sell your house. What do we do? We clean the bathrooms, vacuum and dust, empty the garbage cans, and voila we’re ready for our first showing. We put hours of time, not to mention money into selling our vehicle, but our house only gets a few hours work and we think we’re ready.

What would happen if we put the same effort into selling the house? Surely we can do just a little bit extra so that we can maximize the equity in our home. Thoughts may be that we painted only last year and the green walls in the family room look great, so if the new people don’t like it they can repaint. But what’s not to like? We love it! Also, the carpet in the living room is getting old, but new people are only going to change it to a colour they want anyway. So we’ll offer a little bit off the asking price and they’ll be happy. Right? Wrong! The only problem here is “If they can’t see it, they won’t buy it.”? In other words, if the buyer can’t imagine a crisp, clean, clutter-free room, they will just move on to the next house on their tour of available property.

The way you live and the way you sell are two different things. So let’s put some thought into how we want to showcase our home. The first thing to change is our attitudes. We aren’t selling our home, we are selling our house. Home will be the next place we live in. Once we get past that thought, we are ready to make our house look like the potential purchaser could walk in, put their furniture in place, sit down in front of the television and feel like they are at home. This is not a daunting task. We are not talking about interior decorating. We are talking about staging a house. All it takes is a time and effort.

It is not a cliché when home stagers tell you to remove family photographs from the house. Don’t have your potential purchasers remembering your house as the one with the photograph of the girl in the pink prom dress, but can’t really remember what colour the walls were. Have them remember the room where their couch would fit in perfectly.

A potential purchaser makes up their mind within 10 seconds of walking into a house. Make your 10 seconds count. The entrance should be inviting, bright, clutter-free and welcoming. Create a feeling here that has purchasers wanting to see more, not turn tail and leave.

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Annette Donald, owner of Staged by Design, is a Canadian Staging Professional?. As a Home Stager she services Huntsville, Bracebridge, Gravenhurst, Muskoka, Dwight, Dorset, Novar, Port Carling, Bala, Sundridge, South River, Emsdale, Port Sydney, Barrie, Orillia, North Bay, and Lake Of Bays.

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