These Four Tips Will Help Sell Your Client’s Home FAST!
When you’re selling a house, you want to sell it to the right client — but you also want to do so quickly. Moving a house faster is more profit for you, a more satisfied customer, and less stress for your sellers.
Modifying a home to increase its curb appeal sounds great in theory, but you also don’t want to drop thousands of dollars on modifications, so we put together a few easy, inexpensive tips to make your next house shine.
1. Clean Up Everything
Seems obvious, right? But you’d be surprised how big a difference a spotless house can make. When a house is emptied of furniture, or new furniture is added in order to stage the place for visitors, messes and stains become more obvious. Hiring a professional cleaning crew to give the house a deep clean is well worth the investment.
But it’s not just the interior. Mow the front lawn, pick up anything that might be lying around outside, and clean the windows — clean windows are a great way to completely refresh the look of a house. It’s also a good idea to take a pass with a power washer — they can be rented cheaply and will turn a dingy, dirty driveway and facade into a brand new house.
There are a few other touches that can be made quickly and cheaply to make your house stand out:
- Give the front door a fresh coat of paint in a unique color.
- Add new house numbers (bonus: it’ll make the place easier to find when you’re showing it)
- Install a new mailbox. When’s the last time you cleaned your mailbox?
- Spruce up the landscaping. Trim hedges, take dead leaves out of pots, clear out the cobwebs, and tidy flowerbeds.
- Leave the lights on in case prospective buyers drive by at night.
2. Take Great Photos
Once you’ve cleaned up the house, it’s time to show it off! Professional photos can make a huge difference. According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2018 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 44 percent of recent home searches started online, and 87 percent of those searchers found photos useful in their home search.
Hire a professional. Bad photos are almost worse than no photos at all — they can make a home look small, dark, or dingy, and you don’t want that. A pro will know exactly how to highlight your house’s best angles and unique features, and they can give online house shoppers the best possible first impression.
3. Repaint the Interior
Fresh paint is a surprisingly cheap, easy, and a quick way to completely make over a home. The previous owner spent the last decade making the house their own — an accent wall in the office, a mural in the kids’ room, or a coral makeover in the bathroom — but those personal touches might not align with the new owners’ tastes, and you want them to see the new home as a blank slate.
To do that, you’ll want to create a neutral palette, but don’t just paint everything white — it’s too harsh and comes off as clinical. Instead, go with shades of beige, taupe, cream, and cool grays that will brighten up the house without pushing your potential customers in a direction they don’t like.
Replace the Carpets
Carpets can last a long time if they’re cared for properly, but no carpet will last forever. More importantly, carpets tend to wear in specific areas — stairs, hallways, and the areas in front of and between furniture. Those areas of wear and dirt aren’t obvious when all the furniture is in place, but when it’s moved around or taken out, they start to stand out like a sore thumb.
Replacing carpet can be done in only a day or two, since it doesn’t require the subflooring to be leveled or replaced, and it can provide a great return on your investment. Even better, Sloane’s Carpet Secret’s Registered Industry Partners program can save 10 percent on carpet — that’s in addition to the 50 to 70 percent you’re already saving on our premium carpet irregulars.
Time is Money
Selling a home quickly isn’t just good for your real estate business, it’s good for your clients. It means fewer days of waiting for the check to come in, fewer days of keeping the home in good condition, and fewer days of leaving the house every time you want to show the place. With these tips, you’ll be moving houses faster than ever!