There are a great number of elements that go into the successful, stress-free, profitable sale of a house, but at the end of the day one of the most important factors to that sale is presenting sellers with a home in which they can see themselves living.
When buyers are looking for their next home, they have a long list of criteria in their minds. School districts, taxes, neighborhoods, selling price, home styles, and a million other things are included in those criteria, but if we can take those factors and distill them down into one sentiment, it might sound something like “Can I see myself living here more than the other houses we’ve seen?”
Buyers search based on logic, but they buy based on emotion.
To that end, the more you can do to present your home in a way that resonates with the greatest number of buyers, the more likely you are to have buyers saying “I want this house!” which translates into offers.
3 Tips to Make a Great Impression on Buyers
#1. Declutter
The longer we live in a place, the more likely we are to accumulate things that have meaning to the life that we are living there. The thing is, when a buyer is looking at your home they want to be able to imagine all of the great things that they will do in that home versus the things you have done in the home.
Some great places to declutter:
Kitchens
We all love counterspace, we also love to keep the kitchen gadgets that make life easier out on the counter. But your potential buyers might not have the same love for air fryers that you do. So lets move that air fryer off the counter (just for now, don’t worry) and while we’re at it, we can clear off the toaster and dish drying rack and half-used loaf of bread and just about everything else.
Closets
If you had the option to have a closet so packed with clothes that you couldn’t fit another thing in it or to have a closet with plenty of space to expand your wardrobe which would you choose? Yeah, me too. So this is a great time to whittle down that wardrobe and do some donating or put your winter wardrobe in storage just to show all the great space your closets have.
Basements
Basements are an ideal place to stow all our junk from life, but if your basement looks more like an episode of hoarders than a neatly organized stock room, it may be time to declutter it. Here again, we want to showcase all the room there is for the buyer to put their things and not to show them how much stuff we have.
#2. Clean
Our houses all get a little messy from time to time, and there’s nothing wrong with that. When we’re trying to put our best foot forward, we want to make certain that there is as little as possible that will take away from your potential buyer’s ability to walk through your home and see themselves living in that space. Baseboards, bathrooms, window sills, countertops, and kitchen cabinets are among the potential pitfalls for your buyer to be distracted from their vision of moving in and focus instead on why the floors are sticky.
#3. Depersonalize
This one feels bad to a lot of people, but it doesn’t need to. For the short period of time that your home is on the market being shown to potential buyers, think of it like a fancy hotel or restaurant. When we walk into one of these places as a customer (which is really what buyers are) we don’t expect to see the owner’s family portraits taking center stage in the decorating. Likewise, we should work to remove our personality from the home where possible in order to let the home’s personality shine through and win over the buyers.
Wrapping it up
These things may not sound like a lot of fun, but they will make a huge difference in the buyers’ view of your home. A little bit of prep work prior to the sale can be instrumental in how smoothly the actual sale proceeds. Remember, the goal in this process is to show the buyers all the finer points of your home, let them be able to imagine themselves enjoying life there and to remove anything that would unnecessarily inhibit their ability to do that.
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