Preparing Your Home For Sale

The first thing to do when preparing your home for sale, is to prepare yourself.

What I mean by that is you must emotionally let go of the house. Stop thinking of it as "home" and try to look at it as a potential buyer would.

It may have lots of personal items that give a sense of who you and your family are, but that will make it hard for another family to "see themselves" living there. You need to de-personalize the house as much as possible. A few pictures on the dresser or night stand may be ok, but you want the focus to be on the home, not all of the personal items and family heirlooms.

Storing some things in a storage facility may be necessary and should be thought of as getting a start on moving. The less "stuff" in the house, the bigger it will seem.

Keep bookcases, closets, cabinets, and the garage as free of clutter as possible.

You might consider re-arranging furniture for a better flow and to accentuate the size of the rooms.

Any obvious repairs should be done at this time, too.

Next, clean the house from top to bottom, clean sparkling windows and fresh smell in the home help to give buyers an overall sense of a clean, well maintained home.

The outside may be the most important part of getting your house ready.
Stand at the curb and take a really good look at your house. Imagine yourself as a buyer seeing your house for the first time. The saying in real estate is, "you gotta give 'em a reason to get out of the car".