How to Get the Best Price for your Home

When you’re selling your house, you obviously want to maximize the sales price. There’s more to selling a house than choosing a real estate agent and deciding on a price. To get the most money for your home, you need to invest a little time and effort in getting the house ready to show to the public. The time you spend preparing your home for showing will benefit you in two ways. First, the investment should pay off in the form of a higher sales price. Second, you will prepare for your upcoming move by decluttering your home.

While it might be true that “location,” “location”, “location” are the three most important words in real estate, you can’t change the location of your home. Instead, you need to focus on what you can change. Your new three most important words should be “neat,” “clean” and “uncluttered.” To make these words a reality, you need to visit each room in your house twice.

Declutter Your Home for Showing

The first phase is a mission to declutter. You want your home to look spacious and in order. You will probably need boxes and packing tape for this mission. Here are some key things to focus on:

In the kitchen, pack up the appliances you have on the countertops. Then clean out your cabinets. Pack all the extra glasses, dishes, spatulas and mixing bowls that you have stacked in your cabinets. Keep only what you use on a daily basis. Cabinets that are packed full give the impression that there’s not enough cabinet space in the kitchen.

If your closets are completely full from top to bottom, clean them out and pack up or throw away anything that’s not essential to have in the closet. Overcrowded closets give the impression there’s not enough closet space.

If you have a lot of furniture, either move the extra pieces to storage or donate them to a friend or relative. Excess furniture can give the impression that the room is too small for its purpose.

If your treadmill is in the living room because you watch television while you exercise, put the treadmill somewhere else while you’re showing the house. Perhaps you can find a corner on the patio or in your garage to open up your living room space.

If you have a lot of personal items such as family photos, trophies and items your kids have created, consider packing them away until you move. Potential buyers want to envision themselves living in the house, and that’s harder to do when it’s full of your personal items.

Neat and Clean

Once you’ve successfully decluttered, it’s time to make another pass through each room in the house. Your mission this time is to clean each room and make it look neat and inviting. If anything is dark or gloomy, try to replace it with bright and cheery. Things to focus on in this adventure through each room:

• If you have old carpeting, clean it. If you have old rugs that might make the house look old or tired, get rid of them.

• Clean the toilets, mop the floors and dust everything. Wash your windows, your woodwork and baseboards. Replace old or dirty light switch covers and make sure the bulbs work in every lamp.

• Paint each room in a neutral color like white or grey. This will make your rooms look bigger and brighter and will help cover up any imperfections in your walls.

• Fix anything that’s broken. If you don’t, the buyer will use it to negotiate on the price. Buyers usually expect a much higher concession on price than what it costs to fix something. Fix other things that aren’t broken but aren’t working the way they should, such as such as running toilets, squeaking doors, sticky locks or leaking faucets.

Increase Curb Appeal

When the inside is neat, clean, and decluttered, then it is time to focus on the outside. You want to have “curb appeal,” since the first thing buyers see is the outside of your home. Make sure the grass is cut and landscaped. Get rid of the yard ornaments and kid’s toys. Next, pressure wash the house, driveway, and walkways to get rid of dirt and grime so the exterior of your home looks clean. Consider applying a fresh coat of exterior paint if the paint on your home is chipping or faded.

If this is more work than what you imagined, consider hiring a carpet cleaner, maid service, handyman or yard service to do some of the work for you. The investment you make in sprucing up the house will almost certainly pay for itself, and you will have less anxiety about opening up your home to your neighbors and everyone else who comes to an open house.

Hiring the Right Real Estate Agent in Amelia Island

If you are in the market to sell your home you need a real estate agent that is aggressive, knowledgeable, and local. Summer House Realty is Amelia Island’s premier real estate brokerage. We walk every client through the entire home selling process. This includes:

• Providing competitive comps so our clients can get a good idea of their homes current value.
• We provide valuable advice to consult our clients on the items to focus on to get their home ready for sale.
• We advertise aggressively to get promote our client’s homes and drive the most traffic to their listings. This includes (online marketing, direct mail, open houses, phone calls to network of Realtors, and calling potential buyers)

Our goal is to maximize your profit and get the best price for your home. If you are in the market to sell your home and would like a free consultation on your homes worth, and ways we would market your home, contact Summer House Realty today. Our agents are experienced and some of the most successful throughout Northeast FL. Call us today at (904) 557-3020.