Photo courtesy of Guire Harrison Realty Group (aka Phil and Jeanne) at Coldwell Banker
Record low interest rates coupled with unprecedented tax credits make this winter and spring the perfect time to sell your Hill home. So before you put the “for sale” sign in your front yard front, please consider these tips for selling your home.
The first step in selling your home is to find a real estate agent to represent you and your home. “Agents know what buyers are looking for—from proximity to Metro and Eastern Market to period details,” says Jay Barry, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty. An agent will also walk you through the steps homeowners should take to get a home market ready. Jeanne Harrison of Guire and Harrison Reality Group notes that “homeowners waste money doing things that don’t provide a return on investment.” While it may not be in a seller’s best interest to remodel a home simply for resale, most real estate agents will agree that buyers should spend time staging their home and focusing on their home’s curb appeal before listing it on the market.
The basics principles of home staging include decluttering and neutralizing a home.
Decluttering involves getting rid of or simply removing the things that clutter your home—from old books and magazines to at-home exercise equipment and children’s toys. So go through your home and donate or toss items that you don’t need or want anymore. And for the items you can’t live without, Barry suggests renting a storage unit to hold items that you want to take with you to your next home.
Next, it is important to edit the furniture in your home. Many times, homeowners fill their spaces with things that don’t always fit into floor plans. It is important that you show a buyer that a full-size couch can easily fit into the living room, but you don’t want to compromise a room’s natural flow by overwhelming a space with excessive furniture. Before that first buyer walks in the door, stage living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and home offices with the basics and put your extra furniture in storage.
With clutter and excess furniture out of the way, it’s time to neutralize your home. “People interested in buying a home on the Hill, are often looking for homes with character and period details like original woodwork, crown molding and exposed brick,” says Barry. Taste-specific designs and personal accessories such as photos make it difficult for buyers to look past your design choices and see the house and its charm. Barry recommends introducing warm neutral hues by “painting brightly colored walls or simply touching up already neutral hues” so that the homes character can shine through. Neutralizing existing furnishings is also an excellent way to highlight a home’s character. Use slipcovers and paint to neutralize furnishings, and, if you can’t stand to live without red in your rooms, introduce brightly colored accessories, which also bring new life to tired spaces.
Finally, it is important to focus on your home’s curb appeal. If clichéd marketing slogans have taught us anything it is that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so makes your front space as inviting as possible by planting flowers and keeping your front walk and doorway free of debris while your home is on the market.