The residential real estate market has been on fire over the last few years. People bought just over 5.6 million existing homes in 2020 alone. As an added bonus, average home prices are at an all-time high in many areas.
While those conditions make selling a house easier, it doesn’t mean that you can take a hands-off approach to the home selling process. People still expect that you’ll put in some effort in terms of preparation and staging.
If you’re thinking now is the time to sell, keep reading. We’ll give you five home selling tips that can make your sales process even smoother.
1. Curb Appeal
Boosting curb appeal should appear right at the top of your home selling checklist. That means hitting the essentials, like updating your landscaping. You don’t need to plant flowers and trees, but you should get in some professionals to mow and edge your lawn.
It also means sprucing up the paint on your home if it looks faded or chipped.
2. Essential Repairs
A home can hold up a long time without repairing a number of things. For example, maybe the plumbing doesn’t work in that spare bathroom, so you just don’t use it. While those kinds of problems are fine while you live there, you should get them fixed before you put the house on the market.
3. Declutter
Every home accumulates clutter over time as you buy new things but don’t get rid of other things to make space. Do you have a spare set of dishes in a closet? Did you move that old couch to another room?
Decluttering makes it much easier for someone to imagine their belongings in the same space.
4. Repaint the Interior
No matter how much your kids may love that eye-searing paint job in their rooms, potential buyers won’t. You should repaint any rooms without a neutral color back to a neutral color. Also consider repainting high traffic areas like the kitchen, bathroom, and living room.
5. Work with a Realtor
For sale by owner might sound appealing with the current market conditions, but it can prove an uphill battle. It’s not just a matter of slapping a “For Sale” sign up in your yard. If you want the best price and most thorough exposure, you need your house listed on MLS systems with other homes for sale.
Working with a realtor, such as Curtis Realty Group, means someone else takes care of that for you. It also frees you from logistical problems like scheduling and managing tours, taking pictures, and dealing with paperwork.
Leveraging Home Selling Tips
The home selling tips above aren’t a set of absolute rules. If you repainted interior spaces a year or two ago, they’re probably fine. If your landscaping is your hobby, you probably won’t need much work out there.
Even so, consider your home as if you were a potential buyer. Would the place appeal to you in its current condition? If not, look for the things that would turn you off and correct them.
Looking for more real estate tips? Check out the posts in our Real Estate section.