How I Sold My Home in 10 Days With a Full Price Offer!

Noting Grace
by Noting Grace
2 Weeks
Easy
My home was on the market for only 10 days and we received a full price offer! I'm sharing tips and tricks on how we were able to get our home sold fast with Staging, preparation, and elbow grease!
On my blog, I featured a Sell Your Home Series that helped us get our home ready for the market. These are the highlight from this series. For more details, be sure to visit my blog.
1. Know Your Numbers and set Realistic Expectations In my Sell Your Home Series, we give you tips on how help you to price your home properly, what to discuss with your realtor and how to prepare for your market in your area. Knowledge is key in knowing your price point and appropriate expectations. We talked numbers with our agent and had a game plan of what to expect in different price brackets if an offer came in. We knew our top and bottom of what we should expect to receive. Then we researched ways to stage your home and make it most appealing to a buyer. Once the plan was in place, we got to working on the house. Here's a sample Net sheet that shows your bottom line that your agent can prepare for you.
2. Curb Appeal Making your home a showpiece will attract buyers and increase showings. Make sure your home is beautiful from the outside in. Spruce up the exterior in case potential buyers drive by to see the property before scheduling a showing. We started a month before we listed and worked hard to make sure our home had Curb Appeal and stood out from the rest. Clean up your beds, wash the windows, even pressure wash your driveway. Make it sparkle!
3. Declutter and Depersonalize We rented a storage space for less than $50 for a month and it was well worth the cost when we received the full price offer. We stored any and all personal belongings that might detract the buyer. Family photos, collections, excess toys, out of season clothing, religious items - all are things that might turn a buyer away. While I loved my collage of photos of my babies, I learned that it would take away from the buyer feeling like the space could be theirs. Even bulky furniture can make your home seem small. Store it away! The objective is to help the buyer to see themselves in your home. Now is not the time to show a photo of your favorite aunt or display your spoon collection. Depersonalization is key!
4. Neutralize your Decor The next important step was making the home a neutral environment that anyone could move into without having the work of fixing it up. Most buyers want it move in ready. If you have the loud reds, Polka Dots, or funky wallpaper, take the time and effort to make it neutral. This also applies to any outlandish decor, as well. Look at Pinterest, or decorating magazines for ideas to help you find an easy fix. These little differences can add to your bottom line at closing. 5. Organize, Organize, Organize! It doesn't hurt to give your hall closet the appearance of tons of storage. Put all those extra towels in storage and keep enough for just your families needs. Buyers WILL open your cabinets drawers, hall closets, kitchen and medicine cabinets. Keep them neat and orderly until you have an offer. An added bonus is that you will have less purging to do when it's time for the move!
You can see how much roomier the sink cabinet looks with taking the time to declutter, organize and purge.
6. Make it Shiny Clean We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. It was spotless. We had comments like, "Kids live here?" or "They have a pet?" Think about staying in a hotel. Would you let your family sleep on a filthy mattress or use a bathroom that requires a hazmat suit before entry? Now translate that to your home. Thinking about what impression the buyer might get if you left your sticky mess on the countertop?Following an easy cleaning schedule helps to stay on top of the cleaning after all your hard work. I share a great cleaning schedule on my blog that helped keep our house Show Ready!
7. Take Great Photos How many times have you looked at listings and seen horrible photos? The pet wandering in the room, dishes in the sink, Cousin Ted smoking on the patio? You've worked HARD to get your house ready so make sure your photos reflect it. If you are taking your own photos, you can rent a wide angle lens. I was able to rent one for about $40 and it made our listing photos more professional and the rooms appeared GIGANTIC! In the shot above, the wide angle lens was able to capture 2 rooms.
8. Get Ready to Show Your Home Most important - set up clear showing instructions with your listing agent. We work from our home as well as teach our children, so we needed to block out hours from showings to accommodate our lives. We also requested that all showings call at least an hour before arrival. I hope these tips and tricks help you to get the best offer in the quickest time. Be sure to share any other tips or how this helped you! Check out my blog for links to our Before and Afters to show you how cleaning, organization and neutralizing are essential to Staging your Home.
Noting Grace
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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