Here are five tips to sell your home this spring.
1. Pay attention to street appeal. Buyers will decide within 60 seconds of seeing a home whether they want to consider buying it.
Trimming trees and bushes so buyers can see the house, and pressure washing the driveway, front walk, house and patio are essential. Cleaning and painting the front door can also be an advantage because buyers must linger at the door while they wait for the agent. Adding colourful flowers to sell your home this spring and cleaning the windows so they sparkle inside and out. Putting down mulch at least a few days before an open house so the smell fades before prospective buyers arrive.
2. De-clutter by going through all of your furniture and closets with a discerning eye. If you have 17 jumpers, you need to reduce it down to two, so your closets look bigger. Pack up anything you want to keep, and put it off-site in a storage facility, because you want your home to look like it always has plenty of space in all the closets. If you have dark corners in the house, get rid of clutter in those areas, paint them a light colour and reflect the colour with lighting. If you have a pet, clean the carpets and open the windows to air out the house. Clean or get rid of your curtains if they carry a pet odour.
3. Do pre-inspection repairs. If you know a home inspector is going to find something wrong with your house, go ahead and fix it first. It usually costs less to fix things before a home inspection.
4. Price it right. Even though prices are rising in some areas, sellers need to be reasonable and compare their homes to similar properties that have recently sold.
Buyers today are savvy shoppers. If you price too low, they’ll think something is wrong with your home. If you price it too high and have to lower your price, it will hurt you more than if you price it right the first time. Overpriced homes that stay on the market for 90 to 120 days are extremely difficult to sell.
5. Hire a marketing magician. The majority of buyers start their home search online. To sell a home this spring, make sure that professional photos, a virtual tour and a vibrant description are widely available on multiple websites. More buyers are using mobile phones and tablets to search for homes, so marketing materials should be easy to navigate from those devices, too.