Jul 07
16
FSBO: Before You Begin
The biggest mistake that most people make when selling their home, and this doesn’t just apply to people selling their homes on their own even though it’s probably worse for them, is they do nothing more than put their house on the market and wait. You have to remember that this is a competition. You are competing with every other house of similar size in your area. In order to be the one a buyer will choose is to make it more appealing than any other house in your market. Think of it as like a job interview. If you went to a job interview looking like you just got out of bed with food stuck in your teeth and not acting like you even cared whether you got the job or not, chances are, nobody is going to hire you. Likewise, if you show your house and it’s a mess and there are obvious defects all around, it shows that you don’t care whether they buy the house or not and they won’t. I’ve walked through dozens (hundreds?) of houses as I’ve looked for a home to buy in 3 different states and it has always amazed me at how little peopled cared about their house’s presentation.
Our aim is to make your house the house to buy! Weeks before you put your house on the market, you need to make and execute a list of imperfections that need to be remedied.
First and most important is the outside. When you start marketing your house, a lot of people will do a drive-by to see if they even want to bother coming in to see the inside. If your yard is in shambles, most people will just keep on driving. Make sure your grass is mowed and neatly trimmed. Make sure you have flowers and plantings in your flower beds. Weed your flower beds. If it’s spring or summer, plant annuals to immediately give the outside color. Do any obvious repairs to the outside of the house. If your trim is looking worn and pealing, repaint it. If the bottom seal of your garage door hangs, fix it. If your windows have dried dirt caked on them, wash them. If your deck is looking worn and tired, repair and paint it. Power-wash all of your concrete. Make your yard one of the model yards of the neighborhood.
Once your yard is looking great, it’s time to work on the inside. The next thing to do is de-clutter and depersonalize. Take down all pictures and decoration items, especially collectibles. You may have what you think is the most attractive decor in town, but there are many tastes and you don’t want to elliminate a possible buyer by making it so they can’t imagine themselves in the house. It may make your walls feel empty but that’s OK. If you have your Led Zepplin posters up, it may make it hard for someone to imagine the space with their crucifix on the wall. If you love country style decorating, it may make it hard for someone to imagine their modern stainless steel furniture in the room.
After you empty your walls and de-decorate everything, it’s time to de-clutter. You want the house to feel as large as possible and nothing makes a house feel more crowded than too much furniture. You want your house furnished but not at the expense of space. So take out the extra chair from your family room that sits at an awkward angle. Take out the dressers from the bedrooms and just leave the bare minimum like beds and maybe night stands. Take out the over-sized entertainment system and big screen TV that fill up the family room. Once all the big furniture is out, clean out the closet and storage areas. Take every unnecessary thing out of the garage. Make the garage feel as empty and “big” as possible. Take out extra clothes and stored items from your closets. You want people to come through the house and say, “Wow, there’s a lot of storage here!” Ultimately, you’re trying to change your house from a lived in house to more like a model home. You’ll probably have to get a storage unit or borrow a friend’s garage, but this is so important in putting your best face forward in selling your house.
Next it’s time to do all the repairs that have been plaguing you since you moved in. My wife and I often joke that we never finish our remodels until it’s time to sell the house. On all of the walls that you had pictures, all of the nail holes need to be filled and repainted. Touch-up paint all of the walls and trim. Fix cabinet doors. Re-caulk areas that are getting ugly. Anything that might turn off a potential buyer needs to be fixed.
At this point it may be helpful to have an honest friend or relative go through your house and suggest ways it can be improved. So often when we’ve been living someplace for a long time, we put on blinders to the imperfections. It’s really helpful to have someone without bias give their opinion on things that you may not have ever noticed before.
Finally it’s time to stage. Move remaining furniture so as to take advantage of special features like a fireplace or bay windows. Clean the house from top to bottom including windows, blinds, and baseboards. If you’re out of energy by this point, it may be nice to hire professionals. They’ll bring in 2 or 3 people and have it all done before you know it. Make sure you take care of any bad smells such as diaper pails or pantries or cupboards. Make a fruit bowl or a fresh flower arrangement to replace some of the missing decor on a table or counter top.
At this point your house is ready to show and put on the market!
Remember that you don’t have to do all or any of these items but the tradeoff will naturally be that you’ll have to be competative in the only other way available and that’s price. We’ll talk more about how to set price in a future post but often the price tradeoff is a lot higher than the effort you could put into your home in order to get top dollar.
Now a note on jumping the gun. It’s a terrible and sore temptation to put the house on the market as you’re doing your repairs and preparation. DON’T DO IT! You must always put your house’s best foot forward. It’s kind of like revealing the man behind the curtain. You want the buyer to see the house in its finished state and not show the work put into making it that way. It’s not ready to sell until all preparation is completed. Buying a house is an emotional experience. You want to appeal to their good emotions and not being ready will ruin that.