If you are preparing to sell your home and you want it to sell quickly, and for top dollar, there are two things that you will need to focus on. These two things are Pricing and presentation. They are the most important factors when selling you home and will be on the front lines of your success. When preparing to sell your home you must try to detach yourself emotionally and concentrate on making your home appealing to a broad spectrum of buyers. If you get these two ingredients correct; a home perfectly presented and properly priced; you will have buyers standing in line to make an offer.

 Let's focus on how to get your home ready to sell. De-cluttering your home is the first step when preparing your home to sell. Getting all the "stuff" out that you've accumulated over the years is a huge step. Remember we are trying to show off all of the beautiful features of your home, not how much "stuff" it can hold. You also may want to take down some of the personal items in you home. A few family pictures are nice, but if the entire wall leading up your staircase is cluttered with family pictures this could be distracting to buyers. Once you have De-cluttered and De-personalized your home the next step in preparing your home to sell is to simply organize what is left. Go into your closet and make sure that things are folded nicely and your shirts/pants are hanging in the same direction. Don't just toss your shoes in the bottom of the closet, instead make sure that are neatly placed in pairs. Little details like this do make a difference. You also want your home to sparkle like you could eat off of the floors. Two low cost but very effective ways that help your home shine when preparing your home to sell are pressure washing the walkways and exterior of you home, and cleaning the windows, inside and out. Clean windows let in more natural light, something that buyers like! Finally you want to make sure that your home has a ton of curb appeal. You want to make it impossible for a potential buyer to drive by your home without stopping to check it out. Make sure your lawn is nicely mowed, and all of the trees and shrubs are nicely manicured. You will also want to plant fresh flowers to bring some color to your yard. Now that you have your home properly presented to sell, let's move on to pricing.

Pricing your home correctly is extremely important and is also a two way street. You don't want to leave any money on the table, and you don't want to overprice your home either. When preparing your home to sell ask your Real Estate Agent to discuss different pricing strategies with you, and to go over how they determined the value of your home. The last thing that you want is to be chasing the market down. What I mean by that is overpricing your home in the beginning, getting little or no activity and that reducing the price until you generate interest. That approach will never create winning results. The kiss of death is having your home languish on the market for a long period of time. Have you ever been to a home and found out it's been on the market for a really long time? What is the first thing you think? Wow.. I wonder what's "wrong" with this home and why it hasn't sold. In many cases there is nothing "wrong" but that is a buyers perception when a home has been on the market for long time. You do not want a buyer to be asking the same questions about your home. That is why you need to have your home priced correctly from the start. In almostevery case you are going to have the most buyer activity in the first two weeks. so it's extremely important to have your home priced right at market value out of the gate. This will give buyers immediate value appeal when they walk into your home, and that's exactly what you want!

When preparing your home to sell remember the two P's, pricing and presentation, and you'll have a recipe for success!