1 - Have professionals clean your house. Currently we have a cleaning crew come and clean our house twice a month. On top of this we are doing a lot of our own deep cleaning. We bought some OxyClean and have been making a paste out of it with water and it has really cleaned up the grout!
2 - Pack up all the clutter and the stuff you don't use everyday. We had some nice custom made DVD shelves that my dad made for us and the DVDs were the 1st things packed and the shelves were put into the garage. We also took down all the personal pictures, they can be distracting to buyers.
3 - Touch up the walls, doors, trim. Like I said in other posts, we started a DIY project in December of 2012 and I finally finished repainting all the baseboards and doors and touching up the walls. Its looks pretty good if I do say so myself! :D
4 - Find some smooth jazz and having it playing in the background all day. That way when you have an unexpected showing they will enter the house and have the background music while touring the house.
5 - Make sure your house doesn't smell funny. Everyone's house has a distinctive smell to it (whether we want to admit it or not) and we have 2 dogs...so ours smells like dog...not dirty dog but just dog. We were given an air purifier/sanitizer a while back but it made the house smell too sterile. BUT having the purifier on AND a few Glade plug ins around the house makes it even out and no more dog smell.
6 - Curb appeal. Having a tidy yard is so helpful! We sprayed and pulled weeds, planed flowers and mulched. But I really like working in the yard so this part is kind of fun for me :)
{Curb Appeal}
Bonuses:
I think its always a good idea/plan that you leave the house in a better state then when you bought it. When we bought the house it had some pretty awful paint colors but the previous owner had removed the carpet in the living room and added laminate floors - UPGRADE. We added much more, we added all stainless steel appliances, a large flagstone patio, new carpet/pad in the bedrooms, new baseboards, and repainted with much more neutral/lighter colors. We all so had my dad, he's a woodworker, build us a beautiful new front door.
{Our before and after paint jobs}
Good tips! We did most of those when we move out of our home not even a year ago. We didn't really need to do many touch ups, so we got lucky there! And our house only took 5 days to sell! We also cleared quite a bit off of our kitchen counters. We have always been the type of people to have the toaster, blender, coffee pot, cook books, and a few decorations on the counters. It never looked cluttered, but removing most of those made the kitchen look more appealing than before.
ReplyDeleteThe process is very stressful because the house has to be spotless at all times! And it takes every single person living in the home to make sure of it. I think my husband and I nagged each other during those few weeks more than any other time in our relationship :-)
we were lucky enough to have 2 offers within 24hrs of listing the house! And yes, keeping it spotless is REALLY hard!
Delete