Selling Your Home in the Spring? Replace Your Carpets Now
Making improvements to a home before you sell is a tough balance to strike. On the one hand, you want to put your best foot forward to get the best possible price for your home. On the other hand, you don’t want to spend too much money making improvements that won’t pay dividends on the cost of the house.
So should you replace the carpet in your home before selling this spring? Absolutely! Here’s why.
Get a Jump on Showings
The winter is a slow time for showing houses, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely dead — some of the most serious buyers will be browsing homes in the winter, and you want your house to look its best.
Replacing carpets in the winter will give you a headstart on the house showing season, so you don’t lose any time when traffic starts to pick up.
Make Your House Look its Best
When you sell a home, a lot of the original furniture will be moved or even taken out entirely. The house might be staged, or it might be empty. In either case, the uneven wear and dirt that’s caused by the original arrangement of the furniture will be more on display than ever.
When potential customers walk in, thin or stained areas of carpets stick out like a sore thumb. Remember, you want your clients to see the home as a blank canvas for their new life — if it looks lived-in, it won’t be nearly as appealing.
Take Care of Lingering Smells
Subtle smells of mildew and must in a house are the kind of thing that the owners don’t notice because they’re around them all the time. But prospective clients see them immediately, and it can turn them off the idea of buying the house.
Sometimes, a professional hot-water extraction cleaning (sometimes called steam cleaning) can remove smells from carpet, but the smell is often embedded in the carpet padding itself, which means the only way to get rid of it is to replace it entirely.
Freshen Up the Look of the Home
The median age of a home in the United States is 35 years, and some homeowners have only replaced the carpet once in that time — or not at all! Styles change, and you don’t want to try to sell a home to new, younger buyers if the house still has orange shag carpets.
Modern carpets come in a dazzling array of styles, colors, materials, and patterns. Whether you’re going for a cozy, family-friendly look or trying to appeal to a younger, more upscale crowd, there’s a fresh new look that will take your next house showing to the next level.
What Kind of Carpet You Should Get
You want a new carpet that looks good, in case the new customer wants to keep it. But they may tear it up and replace it with something else, so you don’t need to go overboard with the expense.
We generally recommend installing a nice mid-range cut-pile carpet. It’s an excellent generic carpet that’s premium enough to make the new home look nice, but won’t blow your renovation budget. Pick it in a neutral color like tan, beige, taupe, or warm gray, and the new customer will be able to picture building and decorating around it.
Pick Your New Carpet from Sloane’s
Realtors that join our Registered Partner program will save an extra 10 percent off of carpet, in addition to the 50 to 75 percent lower prices that Sloane’s already offers compared to other carpet retailers.
So take a look around our showroom! Replacing the carpet in a home is inexpensive — you can get long-lasting Berber carpet for as low as $1.88 a foot — and quick, but it can completely turn around any home you have on the market. Before you list your next home, replace the carpet! Your seller will thank you.