You’ve done the initial decluttering and you’ve touched up the paint, repaired the obvious deferred maintenance and your house is on the market and ready for showings. That’s an exciting feeling because now you know all your hard work will pay off! You believe that now agents will want to schedule showings for their clients and multiple offers will be yours to sort through.
Before we get quite there, let’s review best practices to be ready for a showing. First and foremost, you really need to keep the house sparkling clean and always ready. If you work away from home, then you want to turn on strategic lights to highlight the best features in the house and make it feel welcoming. If you are at home when a showing request comes in, then the best bet is to turn on every light in the house. Not only does it create a feeling of airiness, but agents and their clients won’t feel the need to touch every light switch in your house!
If your views are awesome, don’t open all your blinds, curtains, etc. Experience shows that buyers may be distracted by the views and have no memory of the house itself. This can result in never getting an offer because the buyer doesn’t have any clear memory about what was outstanding about your house.
Do at least partially open blinds to let some light in. However, if you have plantation shutters and they do not fold neatly against the walls, you may want to leave them closed against the window and just tilt the vanes a little.
Make sure the only odors are neutral. That is, the prospective buyer should not be able to smell your pets or last night’s dinner. Do not try to mask any odor with a different odor like candles or other scents. That just makes it worse!
Here’s a great hint for you to make it easy to get in and out of your house. If you like me, pull into your garage and then open the already unlocked door to go inside from there, it is more often than not that a showing results in that door being locked. That has been a disaster for many sellers who are now locked out of their house. I recommend if you don’t do it already that you make sure you always have access to a house key so you can avoid that common and often frustrating mistake.
Hope you have found these tips useful. If you want more great ideas for getting your house to show in the best possible way, please call or text 661-375-7325 or email Sally@YourRealAdvantage.com.
