Fixing your home before it goes on the market is essential for getting the right asking and appraisal price. (Globe photo) Related:Make a conscious change Loan calculators
These steps may be the most important ones you take to sell your house – even before you impale the front lawn with a for-sale sign.
"Your home is now going to be a showplace," Devorah Shortsleeve, the co-owner of Pleasant Realty Group, said. "People are going to look at it, you shouldn't have your toothpaste and toothbrush hanging about, you shouldn't have your knickknacks lying about."
Visualize yourself about to move out of the house, not nestled in, she said, adding: "Start thinking in the mode of moving. You are about to sell your home, so start packing those things. Don't just put them in a drawer."
And don't forget the power of first impressions.
"The most important thing is to make the house look as exquisite as possible outside so when they enter, a buyer gets a feeling that you have been taking care of your home for as long as you've owned it," said Avi Davis, owner of Innovative Moves Inc., in Jamaica Plain. Morever, said Davis: "A good trained broker can tell if a buyer is going to buy a house within 30 seconds of entering the door."
Spending a little can pay off big when selling your home.
Spending a relatively small amount of money can pay off big when you're selling your home. Small improvements can help you to sell your home faster, and even command a higher selling price.
Most experienced brokers say decor make or break a home sale, and that the improvements that can clinch a sale are relatively cheap.
"If people can go into a property and think that they don't have to do anything to it to move in, they are willing to spend more money," said Maio. "But where they go in and think they will have to paint, or sand the floors, or do any kind of major cleanup, that means extra money they have to spend."
Spiffing up your house before selling it can also help reduce the tax that you'll have to pay to the IRS on the gain on the sale of your home. Qualified improvements can increase the value of your home, ultimately lowering the amount of tax you'll have to pay after selling.
For more information on these tax benefits, take a look at excerpts from Rules for Sales in 2001, IRS Publication 523 Selling Your Home.
• Gather intelligence before you put your house up for sale.
"You've got to step back and play stranger," said Dorcas Helfant, former president of the National Association of Realtors, who stresses the vital importance of your home's exterior look if it is to sell for the highest possible price in the narrowest possible time frame.
Helfant suggested making a trip along your street to see whether other properties look more fetching and why. Attracting bidders to your house is not exactly a dating game, but superficial beauty counts, especially in the spring when more homes in your area are likely to be competing for buyers.
• Recognize the increasing importance of an attractive frontal view.
Many real estate specialists now urge sellers to concentrate more of their potential presale spending on outdoor improvements, including painting and landscaping.
Part of this has to do with the ever-more-common practice among buyers of sizing up a home on the outside before going in.
Do home buyers believe you can judge the book by its cover? Absolutely, real estate specialists said.
• Remember that condition can be nearly as important as location. • Don't hide the merchandise.
Remove any overgrown greenery that may shroud your house from view.
• Remember that a color picture is worth more than 1,000 words.
Your home may seem stately and grand without the benefit of any colorful floral touches. Yet for a modest sum, you can add flower beds that will beckon prospects to your property whether they see it on the Internet or while driving by.
• Disabuse yourself of the view that most buyers have cash to spare.
Even if your checking account is not overflowing with cash before your home sale, you may have more cash than the buyers considering your property, especially if they're first-time purchasers. Most buyers don't have the money to move in and do upgrades right away.
Develop a conscious selling strategy
Interior:
Consider an inexpensive redo of your home before you sell.
As the author of "Dress Your House for Success" (Three Rivers Press, 1997), Webb offered an array of low-cost suggestions for electrifying the look of your interior.
As a first step, walk through your home with a camera. Examining photos of your rooms taken from various vantage points will give you an objective look at the home as a stranger would see it. "You'll notice which areas look good and which look unattractive or stark," she said.
In the spring especially, pursue any improvements that will make your home look lighter and brighter. "Mirrors are fabulous and not expensive. They make your space feel bigger, and when they're sparkling clean, they bounce light," Webb said.
Webb also recommended treating yourself to "a piece of fine art." Consider a piece of original work sold by a young artist in your area or rent an elegant painting from a gallery.
Replace half-dead houseplants with fresh potted flowers. All too often, homeowners cling to stringy, lifeless houseplants, bunching them together in hopes of making them look more lush. But this strategy inevitably fails to improve their appearance. Rather than regrouping aging houseplants, Webb advised tossing them in the trash can, without suffering any guilt.
"It's not a crime to kill plants," she said.
As a replacement for failing houseplants of the traditional sort, Webb advised shopping at a local nursery for the kind of blooming "bedding plants" that are designed to grow outdoors. These can be extremely attractive when set inside your home in an old copper teapot, an antique silver dish or a dark, tightly woven basket. "Bedding plants can add life and a vibrant mix of colors, like jewels. Also, they're not expensive and last at least a month indoors," she said.
Many homeowners enjoy hanging plants, but Webb advised against them for house-sellers because they block sunshine from the interior of a home.
Purge your place of off-putting personal elements.
House hunters are almost universally put off by any home so crowded with personal belongings that they can't picture themselves having enough space to live there. "You want visitors to feel comfortable the moment they first walk in," Webb said.
Besides elbow room, buyers want fresh aromas. Bad smells can ruin the best-laid sale strategies. To illustrate, Webb tells how one attractive home languished on the market until its owners removed a foul-smelling hamster from a child's upstairs bedroom. "More sales are lost to odors and clutter than anything else," she said.
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