The Definitive Guide on Preparing Your Home for Sale

The essential and first step when thinking about selling your home is planning.

First things first when preparing your home for sale, you need to set realistic timeframes and realistic expectations. It’s essential that the first step is starting with a plan, starting with the end goal in mind will ensure that you stay on track during the process of preparing one of your biggest assets for sale.

This is certainly not a journey you need to undertake on your own. There will be lots of friends, family and professionals that you may need support from. These will include tradesmen/tradespeople, agents, finances, and stylists, just to name a few.

The support that you need during this process will depend greatly on your skill base, the amount of time you have available, the amount of money you have to invest and your timelines for having your house on the market and sold quickly. Remembering though, a house that hits the market quickly does not always mean a house that sells quickly. Many houses that are rushed to market and are not prepared will take longer to sell then houses that are well prepared and may take a little longer to be ready for market, however they sell quickly often for the highest possible price. Rushing your property to market when it is not well prepared and presented can often mean leaving money on the table for the buyer.

Find your power team that will help you and guide you through the exercise of determining where your skills are, what you can do and what you might need help with, in some cases a small amount of money invested at the beginning will yield a substantial return on investment.

The next step is looking at your property through a visitor’s eyes, through the eyes of the buyer. For some people its going to be really difficult to achieve, in some cases this is because they are so emotionally connected to the property after living there and often raising a family there for many years. In other cases, it is purely because when you live in a home for even as little as a year you start to not see small maintenance, upgrades or even cleaning that may need to be done. This is one of those perfect times to find friends that you can always rely on for an honest opinion or that family member that at times makes you cringe with their open honesty. It is one time that those friends and family members are a true asset.

Okay, you now worked out how much time, skills, energy and money you have to put into the project. You have also identified who your possible power team can be to assist you on this exciting journey, and you have taken off your rose coloured glasses or found someone to help you with looking at your property objectively.

The next step is the inspection. Remember you need to start the inspection at the roadside or the garden curb, depending where you live. Arm yourself with pen and paper and list every room before you start to ensure you overlook nothing.

In many cases it’s important to complete the inspection on a few occasions. Sometimes when our spaces have every day items and clutter in them it can make it hard to see and identify all of the elements that need addressing in a space. So consider a multistep process and as you peel back the layers you will be able to identify exactly the things that need your attention. Always consider your return on investment (which we will be talking about some more very soon).

Undertaking these first three steps will make the rest of the process of preparing your property for sale a much more streamlined journey, it’s all about planning first and then actioning.