Are You Looking To Sell Your House?
We’ve created a checklist of everything you need to do before putting your home on the market for sale. From decluttering and staging to making repairs and getting rid of clutter, this list will help to make sure that all bases are covered. Our checklist will help with preparing your home for sale to attract the right potential buyer.
The sooner you get started with these tasks, the easier it will be when it comes time to put your house on the market for sale. It may seem like a lot at first, but don’t worry – we have some great tips for how to tackle each task in just 30 days or less!
Let’s Dive Into Our: Getting Your House Ready to Sell” Checklist!
The very first thing is to divide the tasks that you know need to be done into groups that must be done no matter what at the end of each day.
Where To Start?
You will want to walk inside and outside of your house and audit what needs to be done. This will be anything from deferred maintenance, landscaping, decluttering, throwing away things, selling items, and packing up items in a storage unit. Then once you have your list of things you need to do to get ready to sell, then you will want to divide that out by 30 days.
One thing to remember, you are getting your house ready to sell. If you want top dollar, no surprises, and to sell your house for top dollar, then you will need the overall condition to reflect that.
Week One:
Make room by decluttering, depersonalizing, packing, and even having a garage sale and/or using apps like OfferUp to sell things. You will want to free up space and leave things that enhance the feel of the house to help increase the perceived value of the house. By depersonalizing, decluttering, etc your home, it will help potential buyers to be able to visualize themselves in there with their own colors and decoration, versus yours.
You will want to get either colored tape or boxes to separate everything into four groups:
- Storage: these will be the items that you clearly plan on putting into storage.
- Selling: these will be items you are desiring to sell.
- Donating: these will be items of quality that somebody would buy but you want to just give them away to a charity.
- Throwing away: these will be items you will throw away one way or another.
Week Two:
During the second week, you will want to do your deferred maintenance items to get your house ready to sell. This could be plumbing, electrical, roofing, putting on a fresh coat of paint, landscaping and curb appeal, etc. You will have divided up all of your deferred maintenance into seven days.
You can hire a professional home inspector to do a home inspection of your house to give you a checklist of items that will or should be done to get your house ready to sell. Your real estate agent should have a trusted home inspector relationship they can refer you to. Then go thru the inspection report and fix the major items that may appear, and even some or all of the deferred maintenance items.
You will want to divide your week into inside projects and outside projects to get your house ready to sell. Some of these items you can outsource through companies like Thumbtack, or why not ask your real estate agent who should have background-checked vendors for you to choose from. The concept is to complete all of your deferred maintenance items to get your house ready to sell within week two.
Week Three:
Now it is time to put a bow on the hard work you just did or outsourced to get your house ready to sell. In week three, you will want to professionally deep clean your house. You can find professional house cleaners on Thumbtack, or ask your real estate agent for a trusted source. You will want every detail of your house cleaned.
Now that your house is squeaky clean and ready to sell, you will want to reach out to your real estate agent to get your home listed.
Week Four:
Now that you have your home ready to sell, it is time to put your home on the market to sell it. Selling your home is not always easy, but since you have done things to help get your house ready for potential buyers, we hope the home selling process will be that much easier and smoother for you.
Your real estate agent should order professional photos, install a post and sign to go up in your front yard, and a lockbox for other professional real estate agents to easily and smoothly gain access to your home to show their potential buyers.
You might want to consider having a listing home warranty that you can offer to potential buyers when they purchase your home to give you peace of mind while selling it and home buyers peace of mind when they take possession of your house.
Summary
Selling your home can be made smoother by following a checklist to get your house ready to sell. This will require you to enhance the curb appeal, adding a fresh coat of paint, replacing light bulbs and adding new light fixtures where needed, and even making your front door look beautiful. Following these tips and getting additional tips from your trusted real estate agent will help reduce the possibilities of stress that can accompany selling your house.
When your hire a professional real estate agent, they can help guide you through the checklist for getting your house ready to sell. Selling your home to potential buyers can be overwhelming, and this is why it is important to hire a professional agent to help you sell your home. As you may see, when you sell a house, it is much more than just finding a potential buyer.