Selling your home can be so stressful! And so emotional. Here’s a list of some of the steps we took to get our home on the market and sold in a hurry. It’s not a comprehensive list, but it definitely highlights what we focused on—and our home sold in six days. ☺️
First things first, get out your list of home projects that you’ve had for years and knock that out. This is the saddest part of selling your home, because it really looks better than ever when you’re trying to sell. I understand that is entirely the point, but it’s a hard pill to swallow that it could have always looked that good if you just blocked off a little time to make those house projects happen before. . .
Scrub down surfaces that you don’t frequently.
I Swiffered all of our ceilings and walls, then we scrubbed down our cabinet fronts, and spent tons of time buffing the baseboards which made our whole home look so much cleaner!
Use painters tape to flag little wall imperfections.
We were selling an old home, so there are plenty of wall imperfections. What I’m talking about is scuffs from wear and chips in paint. Use a magic eraser to address most of those flagged areas and remove tape as you complete each spot. If paint is required, dedicate a morning or evening to getting all your extra paint shaken up and touching up around your home.
Take down the personal stuff.
This was hard for me since I love to display personal photos! I left up a few, if I’m honest, but nothing that seemed like it would impose on a potential buyer’s ability to picture themselves living there. I swapped out two large engagement photos hanging on the walls with an antique mirror and an abstract art piece, swapped out a few little picture frame photos with general landscape photos, and took down allllll the fun invites, coupons, pictures, and Lord knows what else that lived on our fridge.
Eliminate most of your smaller items.
Take down and hide or pack up most of your decor pieces/life items in each room until it looks almost too bare. Then, take a break. Come back at it and add pieces back in with a fresh eye. For example, I pretty much hid everything on our nightstands, turned books around to hide their busy-looking spines, took nearly everything off of our kitchen counters, and intentionally used trays (my favorite design trick) to group little items together to keep things looking ultra-organized in our main living spaces.
Dust and vacuum your way out of the house.
I nearly wore my arm out from running the dang vacuum every day while people came to see our home. As for dusting, look at your house really critically when in the sunlight to catch any problem areas since you likely just did a major house cleaning prior to listing the house.
Nix all the reminders of your pet.
Even pet people only truly love their own pet. As a potential buyer, reminders that a pet lived in and likely had accidents/was dirty in the home you’re touring doesn’t help. Our dog is the world’s most spoiled, so we had to remove multiple dog beds, her pillow, her dog tent, her big food bin, and even take down multiple framed photos of our dog. 😂 This is super important for photos, but even more so for showings! Every time someone came to look at the house, I would grab everything of hers (SO MUCH STUFF), plus her, and drive off.
There are so many more ways to prep your house to sell, but these are the major ones we worked on. You could wait forever to finally get your house on the market, but if your home is in a great location, you’ve done the big stuff, and you’ve always maintained your house…we bet you’ll be in great shape! Happy Selling!