• Recognize that many buyers resist purchasing a jam-packed home.

CLUTTER EPIDEMIC Are you another victim of the "national clutter epidemic?" These six suggestions could help you slim down.

Crowded rooms seem smaller than they are. Home buyers rarely determine the size of rooms with a measuring tape. Most do it mentally.

• Purge your place of 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.

• Visualize yourself about to move out.

You are about to sell your home, so start packing those things. Don't just put them in a drawer.

• Eliminate bad odors.

Buyers want fresh aromas. Bad smells can ruin the best-laid sale strategies.

• Realize that any sort of large collection can crowd your home.

• Don't seek to conceal anything weird. Remove it.

• Gather intelligence before you put your house up for sale.

Step back and play stranger. Take a trip along your street to see whether other properties look more fetching and why.

• Recognize the increasing importance of an attractive frontal view.

Many real estate specialist 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.

• 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.

• Small improvements can help you to sell your home faster.

They can even command a higher selling price, and also help reduce the tax you'll have to pay on the profit from the sale of your home.

• Disabuse yourself of the view that most buyers have cash to spare.

Most buyers don't have the money to move in and do upgrades right away.

"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."

• Remember that condition can be nearly as important as location.

Compiled from the Boston Globe archives.