How To Make Your Home Sell Faster

Parade recently ran an article suggesting how to make your home sell faster. Here are some of their tips:

• Scrub till it sparkles! When things sparkle, houses sell.

• Clobber the clutter. The less stuff you have, the bigger the house will seem.

• Pay attention to details. That means patching any holes in the walls, fixing leaky faucets and replacing burned-out light bulbs.

• Camouflage with paint. Paint not only makes a house look better, it also helps with odor. Pick neutrals.

• Entice buyers to enter. Go across the street to get a good look. Your eye should be drawn to the door, not to the grass that needs mowing, the overgrown weeds or that old rain gutter that has been sitting in your driveway since 2005.

• Define each room. Don’t force buyers to guess a room’s purpose.

• Use furniture wisely. And sparingly. See if you can pare down a quarter to a half of the furniture in every room. Think about visual weight as well. Big furnishings make a room seem smaller.

• Highlight key architectural elements. “The biggest mistake I’ve seen is wonderful features—moldings, leaded glass, beautiful fireplaces—hidden by drapes, cabinets and clutter,” says LaPorta.

• Let there be light. Turn on every light in the house—even in the daytime. In general, use 100 watts per 50 square feet of floor space, says LaPorta.

We're smack dab in the middle of deciding which of these to take on. As I've said, we're house shopping, but it could take us months to find what we're looking for (and as long as the market is dropping, we're in no hurry to buy or sell.) So we're now discussing a list of items we probably need to do anyway -- the main ones being repainting here and there and getting the deck re-stained. But once we do put the house on the market, you better be sure that we'll pull out all the stops. And in a month or so, my rose hobby will come in quite handy as it will make the front of our house a thing of beauty and help to spice up the inside with cut flowers here and there.

Comments

[the landlady]

Good list! Another big one - replace any doorknobs that are wobbly or sticky. I was once showing an apartment (virtually the same as showing a house for sale, just smaller stakes), and the doorknob fell right out of the front door... not a good look. I replaced it with a vintage crystal doorknob, and now most people comment on it right away. It makes a world of difference.