Are
you planning to sell your home? Want
to get the most for your home? Is there competition in your neighborhood
with respect to other homes similar to yours for sale? How do you
differentiate your home from the others on the market in ? Have you lived
in your home for a number of years and have it decorated to your takes
but are not sure if your taste will be compatible with a potential
buyers? Do you have a life time of possessions filled with memories?
Where do you begin? This can be an exhausting and overwhelming process.
Don't worry. We can help. We get calls all the time from people just
like you.
This is part of our best in class series of articles and helpful tips and insights to help you with your home by Nick Santoro and Joe Santoro of Personal Property Managers. Personal Property Managers specializes in real estate sales and marketing, home downsizing, content clean out and removal and estate sales. We service Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These tips and insights are especially important and true in the environment we are in today, with the global economy turned upside down, massive job losses, and the need for extreme social distancing due to the Corona Virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease. Additionally, during this challenging time in the Corona Virus and COVID-19 era, we help families that are unable travel or tend to their property needs by providing a true one-stop resource. We are focused on making life just a little easier for families during often difficult times. With Personal Property Managers, one call does it all.
One of the areas you may want to focus on is a concept called home staging. This refers to how you have your home furnished and decorated and painted; the basic look and feel that your home presents itself to a potential buyer. It's all about preparing your home to make it optimally ready for sale in today's real estate marketplace.
Anything you can do to help buyers see your house in its best light will benefit you and shorten the selling cycle. Home staging is important and can raise the value of your home by as much as 5% to 15% according to various industry studies.
Here are 10 tips that you may want to consider for...
1. De-personalize your home; make it the buyers home
You want to prepare a home so that it invites a prospective buyer to see their family in it, not yours, so you want to de-personalize the home without making it cold. This means removing highly personal items like pictures and religious icons and bringing in things that are appealing to all humans, such as fresh flowers and attractive artwork.
2. Remove clutter from your home, make it look large
Today's home buyers, particularly younger ones, don't like clutter - they like clean, open spaces, which becomes particularly important for those selling older homes. The presence of clutter in the form of piles of old shoes, loads of personal pictures, or overloaded and jammed closets and cabinets and garages makes buyers feel like they're invading the seller's space and can also indicate to a buyer that the seller doesn't want to or isn't ready to move.
3. Neutralize your home
Paint colors should be more neutral to appeal to everyone so that the house feels expansive. You can bring in touches of color, but let the house be neutral and let each room have one focal point, such as the fireplace in the living room or the bed in the bedroom covered with a cream bedspread and red pillows so that it pops. White walls are safe in that they go well with everything and people won't feel like they have to repaint right away, but they still prefer coffee-colored or another neutral-colored wall. Bright paint colors can turn people off, as can wallpaper, which buyers might see as a project to remove and which become items they start knocking off the selling price.
4. Go green with energy efficient appliances or windows
Today's home buyers are more sensible and energy-conscious, which translates to a willingness to go smaller and/or renovate. They also have more of a respect and appreciation for energy-efficient and green design.
Make a great first impression in the foyer with a clean, open area and the use of mirrors, which bounce light back and make spaces look bigger. Hard wood floors today are more and more popular and desirable vs. carpeting of years ago
5. Don't forget the outside of your home
Please remember that by the time a buyer views the inside of the home, they have already formed positive or negative opinions based on their experience outside. You don't want to create negative impressions for buyers as they pull up to the house. Cracked driveways, broken trees, unclear mailbox numbers, or peeling paint can all detract from your homes value. You also want to maximize the front door experience by ensuring that buyers are met with good lighting, a working doorbell, attractive landscaping, and the absence of cobwebs. Curb appeal is king.
6. Smell check - scent matters
The scent of a home is important and you need to be able to smell your house. As silly as it may sound, do a ‘smell check' or ask your realtor to do it for you, but pet odors, dampness in the basement, etc. need to be cleared.
7. Walk through with a fresh set of eyes
Sellers become blind to things in their home after 10 days such that they know where light switches are and how not to bump into furniture. When you're staging, you need to see what your house looks like with fresh eyes - (or in) the eyes of a buyer.
8. Keep closets and storages areas clean
Buyers will open closets to see the storage space available, but it will also tell them a little about the homeowner. Cheap lighting or poor maintenance will tell them the extent to which sellers took care of, or invested in, the home and the seller mentality they might be dealing with.
9. Other areas to take a look at
Make sure that all beds are made, there are no dishes in the sink or clothes on the floor, areas are generally straightened up, and remove any traces of pets, such as dog toys or litter boxes.
10. Make the common sense staging investment
Don't do more than the home value would justify, but we always tell sellers to consider investing one percent of the home's asking price on staging activities such as painting a few rooms or staining the deck. These activities can add value to the home, make the highly emotional moving process easier for the seller, and help attract a new buyer who will love the home as much as the seller did.
At Personal Property Managers, we understand the emotional toll downsizing, moving or selling a home can take on our clients and their families. Our goal is to help you transition seamlessly to this exciting new chapter in life.
More information can be found on who we are and lessons for home selling experts via these brief video links
We offer 6 primary services to help families or executors. They are:
Additional info can be found on this brief 90 second video or a full array of great tips and insights and video by clicking on our resource page.
For more insights, tips and videos please visit our Resource Page in the About us tab.
For more information on real estate or home downsizing please contact Nick Santoro or Joe Santoro of Personal Property Managers at 215-485-9272 or 908-368-1909. Personal Property Managers specializes in helping home owners transition from their home of many years into a new community. Personal Property Managers services Pennsylvania and New Jersey and offers downsizing services, estate sales services, home staging, discount full service real estate services via its association with EveryHome Realty. Learn more about Personal Property Managers from our recent News Stories.
