You’ve owned your home for a while and now it’s time to sell.
After spending a number of years planting your roots in the ground, it’s now time to harvest what you sow. Hopefully, your house has blossomed into a delightful bouquet. From updating rooms to maintaining important systems, I am sure your house is beautiful to you.
When selling your home though, you need to make your house appealing to a prospective home buyer. All the maintenance and upgrades have been worthwhile and now it is time to artfully prune those flowers and make them shine in the vase. So how do you put those finishing touches on your home to harvest a great profit on the equity you have built up?
Here Are A Few Tips To Make Sure You Get The Most Out Of Your Home Sale.
- Finish your projects – Whatever upgrades or maintenance you have been working on it is time to put a bow on it. Don’t leave any loose ends or unfinished work for buyers to see. This throws up big red flags when a buyer walks through.
- Clean it up – It’s time to de-clutter the house and clean it up. Get rid of old stuff in closets you know you don’t plan to take with you. Pressure wash the house and driveway. Clean the windows and do some landscaping to make sure your home has great curb appeal.
- Price it right the first time – When meeting with your Realtor decide on a competitive list price that will attract interest. Do not price your home well above what you think the home is worth just to see if some rube might come along and pay it. That strategy rarely works and leads to your home sitting on the market. If you price your home correctly when you first list the house you are more likely to achieve a better sales price. Interested buyers in your area are scouring the internet for new listings daily to see what is coming up. If your home is priced right and looks good you will get lots of attention and offers. So place the home on the market with a good starting price and don’t rely on an out-dated strategy of overpricing a home and waiting.
- Negotiate smartly – Many times a seller can see the buyer as the opposition in a transaction. Starting off with an adversarial stance in negotiating can often backfire and here’s why. When negotiating a contract, if a seller decided it is going to be “my way or the highway” then a buyer tends to recoil. They may sign the contract but somewhere along the way a problem or issue may come up. And if the seller has been overly tough then the buyer may be just as willing to pay back the favor with more overly strong negotiating. This can lead to deals falling apart. Remember, the transaction is everyone working together to get what they want. The buyer wants the house, and the seller wants the money. The old saying of “you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar” applies here. Catch the fly you want by having a friendly stance with the buyer.
I hope you can harvest a great deal when you put your home on the market. Happy House Hunting!