5 Tips to Ensure Your Home’s Showing Is a Success
The purpose of showing your home is to hook a buyer. You want buyers to come through your house and be impressed - so impressed in fact, they’re ready to make an amazing offer! You’ll have one chance to make a great first impression, so make sure to follow these five helpful tips to really make it count!
Focus on the outside. Make sure you don’t neglect the outside of your home. Curb appeal can make or break the odds of someone even bothering to get out of the car to come in. If they pull up and see a home with a lawn that obviously needs edging and has an unkempt flower bed, they’re going to wonder what else hasn’t been cared for properly. You want the outside of your home to be spotless. Clean the siding, the windows, and the doors. Make sure there are no dirt smudges or cobwebs and that anything that needs painting has been spiffed up.
Take yourself out of the house. That means you’ll want to remove personal items, including family photos. You want the home to look neutral so potential buyers can look at your house and picture themselves living there. Think of a magazine catalog, nice and neutral!
Remove clutter you see at first glance. If you look around, it may amaze you at how much stuff you’ve accumulated over the years. Some of it might very well be important, but that doesn’t mean potential buyers should see it. Clutter minimizes the living space of the house. It makes it look and feel cramped and smaller. Many homeowners get something called house blindness. They’ve lived in the home for so long with the same clutter that they don’t even really see it anymore. But a stranger will always notice. So clean out your home and make the space as roomy and clutter free as possible.
If you have a pet, hide all telltale signs. That means no cat litter box, no dog toys, no pet food dish. Your home should be free from all pet odors. You don’t want to lose a possible deal just because they can smell your pet’s presence.
Stage your home! Staged homes sell for 5-10%+ more than un-staged homes, and staging greatly decreases time on market. It’s truly a way to make your listing stand out among the competition.
First impressions are HUGE when showing you home to potential buyers, but by following the simple tips above you will be well on your way to making a great impression and, hopefully, receiving multiple offers! (And if you are at all anxious about this important step, just reach out to a trusted Realtor® who can help guide you through this process!)
