I didn't feel like cleaning any more tonight, but I promised, so here goes.
Once the main areas of your house are spotless, the basement, garage, storage areas, and closets need to be addressed. To make closets look bigger, pack away off season clothing and/or donate unused items to your local thrift store or charity. Straighten and organize shelves and items on the floor. If you choose to paint closets, paint them white as they will not have to be repainted when the adjoining room walls are changed.
An unfinished basement can actually be set-up like living space to show it to its best advantage. If you have old furniture piled in a corner or end of your basement, consider buying an inexpensive area rug and arranging the furniture as a sitting area/family room or set up a table and chairs as a game area. If the basement floor and walls are raw cement and block, they can be painted to brighten and finish the area. It's amazing how drastically an old cellar changes with a gray painted floor and off white walls. Even packing stored items and stacking them neatly against one wall, will show the basement to its best advantage. Keep dirty laundry in baskets rather than strewn around the laundry room floor. Empty litter boxes and clean pet kennels or cages.
Garages are every person's challenge to make clean and neat. Again, sometimes it just takes an afternoon sorting tools into their respective drawers and sweeping the floors. An organized work area gives the potential buyer the impression that the seller is a person who cares about home maintenance and wouldn't "let things go unfixed."
And finally, the last thing that doesn't cost a lot of money but makes a huge impact on prospective buyers is the yard. Trim the bushes. Weed the garden. Pull the dandelions. Remove weeds from the sidewalk cracks. Trim the grass back from the sidewalk and driveway edges. Rake the leaves. Pick up debris. Replant grass seed in weak or dead spots. Pick up what Rover left behind. And if you choose, plant flowers or put out planters of flowers that you can take with you.
The next steps require some financial input. Repair torn screens and broken windows. Paint the house trim if needed. Make sure the front door and storm door are freshly painted or cleanly scrubbed. Make sure the door lock works easily so buyers can get in! Go through your house and make a list of little deferred maintenance items. Prioritize which ones you will repair and make the repairs. Some people are handy and can do the repairs themselves. Others have to hire the work to be done.
Look at the cosmetics of your house critically. Would "peel and stick" tile in the bathrooms or kitchen update the decor? Would fresh paint help? How would the rooms show if you rearranged the furniture or packed away some of your collections? Is there a spot on the carpet that needs to be addressed by professionals? All of these questions are things to discuss with your agent. Consider that putting your house's best foot forward will make it stand out in the buyers' eyes. In a buyers' market, that is the sellers' goal: Make my house be the one the buyer remembers and wants to buy!
March 28, 2006 - Excellent!
And timely too, thanks.
Posted by: Greg DiSisto | December 31, 2006 at 10:41 PM