So you want to sell your home, and you want to sell it fast. But the problem is you aren’t sure if it’s even possible to find a buyer for your property in as little as a week--or even less.
Actually, it is possible—you just need to know the secrets to making it happen.
Your decision to sell probably comes from a new job, the need to make a future move or just the desire to have a change of scenery. Or perhaps, you still love your home but you just feel like it doesn’t suit you anymore, so you’re moving out. Whatever your reason is for selling your home, there is certainly a way to sell your property in a week even in a slower market.
Keep reading to know the tips for selling your home in a week or less.
Yes, you can sell your home in a week and for the most money.
Selling your home for the highest price in a week or less is a tough thing to do.
If you don’t get the right agent to assist you, your property might end up lingering on the market for weeks, let alone months.
In this article, I will share with you some secrets that can help you sell your Shawnee KS home in a week and for top dollar. Follow these tips and you’ll be surprised how your hard work gets you exactly what you want at the end of the day.
TIP # 1: PACK YOUR STUFF
If you want to sell your home quickly, the first thing you need to do is to pack up as many of your things as you can. Half of all your stuff sounds like a lot, but you’ll pack up soon anyway so why not do it now?
You’re probably thinking—how can packing help sell my home in a week? Well, emptying out your home will make it look more spacious. As a home seller, you need to be ready anytime a prospective buyer visits your home, so make sure you have already depersonalized it before your first visitor comes.
Since packing up can be overwhelming, you can use the following tips to make this task as organized as possible:
Work on the Walls
As you pack up, start working on the walls by taking down the pictures. You don’t necessarily have to take down everything—leave a few here and there for staging purposes. If you have 20 picture frames in your living room, you can leave three of them hanging to decorate the walls and pack up the rest.
Remove Clunky Furniture
After packing up, simplify your furniture by getting rid of all the extras. For example, you can take out all the extra chairs in the corners, extra dressers and other fillers in your home and just leave out all the basic furniture in each room.
Emptying out some of your extra furniture will help make the rooms of your home look more spacious and less lived in. This will also help your prospective buyers walk around your home more easily when they pay a visit.
Declutter Closets and Cabinets
You might ask, isn’t it too early to declutter? Well, decluttering is indeed a lot of work, but it’s something you’ll eventually do anyway. If you pack ahead of time, you’ll give yourself a jumpstart on the work you would have to do after selling your home.
When prospective buyers inspect a home, they usually open all the cabinets and closets that they see. As the owner of the home, you wouldn’t want your prospective buyer to see all your cabinets stuffed with clutter, so get rid of that junk and make your closets and cabinets look less chaotic.
Here are 3 basic tips for decluttering your closet:
• Make time for it. Treat decluttering as a project and choose a reasonable time to do it. Complete your project on a day where you have more than enough time to do the work.
• Categorize your clothes. Identify which of the clothes in your closet you will keep, donate or throw away. Use a hanger system for all the clothes you wear on a regular basis and determine which among the folded ones you are ready to dispose of in the next couple of months.
• Store clothes you are not using this season. Divide your “keep” clothes into seasons and whichever you’re not wearing at the moment, store in a bin or garment bag. This way, you will be able to free up more room in your closet and prospective home buyers will think that your closet is spacious.
TIP # 2: DO THE NECESSARY FIXES
Making manageable updates on your home will help you sell it more quickly. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot on these upgrades—you can do these upgrades on little things in your home that you have been meaning to fix for quite some time now but you haven’t been able to. Since you are selling your home now and want to sell it quickly, it’s about time to make these aesthetic updates. See what difference they can make.
Here are some ways to make easy, manageable updates on your home:
Replace Outdated Items with New Ones
If you want your home to attract more prospective buyers, make it look more modern by replacing some of the things in it that already look dilapidated. These things can include old light fixtures or an old kitchen table. Take a look around you and decide what simple changes you can do to boost your home’s overall appeal.
Give It a Fresh Coat of Paint
The last thing home buyers would ever want to do is to buy a home that needs a lot of work. If you want a prospective buyer to get carried away as soon as he makes his first step into your home, make your walls look as perfect as possible by repainting them. Giving your home a fresh coat of paint will not only make it look fresh. Remember, homebuyers love a home that’s neat and new.
In 2017, Zillow analyzed 32,000 listing photos of homes that have been sold in the U.S. and they found that certain colors actually worked better than the rest. Here are Zillow’s findings on which colors to use and avoid:
• Kitchen
👍 Blue (light blue to soft gray blue)- Home sold for $1,809 more on average
👎 Yellow (straw yellow to marigold)- Home sold for $820 less on average
• Bathroom
👍 Blue/Purple (light powder blue to periwinkle)- Home sold for $5,440 more on average
👎 White/No Color (off white or egg shell white)- Home sold for $4,035 less on average
• Bedroom
👍 Blue (light cerulean to cadet blue)- Home sold for $1,856 more on average
👎 Pink (light pink to antique rose)- home sold for $288 less on average
• Dining Room
👍 Blue (sate blue to pale gray blue)- Home sold for $1,926 more on average
👎 Red (brick red, terracotta or copper red)- home sold for $2,031 less on average
• Living Room
👍 Brown (light beige, pale taupe, oatmeal)- Home sold for $1,809 more on average
👎 Blue (pastel gray, pale silver to light blue, periwinkle)- Home sold for $820 less on average
• Home Exterior
👍 Gray/Brown (greige—mix of grey and beige)- home sold for $1,526 more on average
👎 Brown (medium brown, taupe or stucco)- home sold for $1,970 less on average
Do Some Easy Maintenance
As you pack up, you leave more space inside your home exposed. As you take photos off the wall, the wall becomes bare and you might notice lots of nail holes on it. Since such holes are not visually pleasing, you have to do something to make your walls look nicer. You can do this by filling all those nail holes and repainting them.
Upgrade your Pantry
One of the small upgrades that you can make without going crazy is the pantry. You can turn this quick and easy upgrade into a weekend project, where you replace its old, dingy curtains with French doors to make it look new.
TIP # 3: STAGE YOUR HOME
When it comes to selling a home, the prospective homebuyer’s first impression is a crucial factor. While some home sellers think that staging a home is not as important as the other steps in preparing a home for sale, staging a home is actually one of the secrets to selling a home quickly. It plays a critical role in your marketing efforts so you shouldn’t take it too lightly. Home staging does not only make prospective homebuyers feel that your space is livable—it also makes them want to buy your property as soon as possible.
Here are some home staging facts you probably didn’t know:
• Most buyers offer more money—around 1% to 5% more-- for a home that is staged over a similar home that is not staged.
• 81% of buyers find it easier to visualize a staged property as their future home.
• A research conducted by Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp. found that compared with non-staged homes, staged homes spend half the time on the market before they get sold. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the longer a home stays on the market, the more its price drops.
• A survey conducted by Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp. found that staged homes sell for more than 6% above the asking price.
Home staging helps you highlight your home’s strengths and downplay its weaknesses. Here are some tips for staging your home without burning a hole in your pocket:
Light It Up
For most homebuyers, lighting is everything. That is why when staging your home, the first thing you need to do is to make it shine. You can do this by taking your thick, dark curtains off your windows to let as much natural light in as possible.
Usually, the darkest parts of a home are the laundry room and kitchen. If those two rooms in your room have dim lighting, replace them with brighter bulbs. That may sound like a less important thing to do, but it actually makes a huge difference. Home staging expert Herline Goutama of “Let’s Stage It!” advises that every home should have at least three sources of light to look visually appealing.
“The key is to create subtle variances of light levels, which accentuate surfaces and make the room feel more spacious.” –Herline Goutama
Rearrange Your Furniture
Once you have already improved your home’s lighting, the next thing to do is to arrange and rearrange your furniture. Make sure that your home has enough space to allow people to walk freely so when prospective buyers visit your property, they won’t feel stuck or trip on poorly positioned furniture. You can also add some greens and flowers to your windowsill and get creative with your walls. Plants are crowd pleasers and they help boost the overall appeal of your home. Lastly, look around you and make sure to take out all the personal photos and other stuff that might make your prospective buyer feel that the home is not for them.
Use White Linens
Did you know that you can actually achieve that spa-like atmosphere inside your home without breaking the bank? If you have white linens in your closet, you can take your master bathroom and bedroom to the next level by using those. Transform your master bathroom into a luxury spa by putting thick white towels and shower curtains on display. You can also roll some bath towels and hand towels and place them on the tub and near the sink to add a pleasant hotel look.
Set Up Your Yards for Staging
When it comes to staging your home, treat the exterior as important as the indoor. The outside of your home is important to stage too, because it is what prospective buyers see first before they even enter your home. What they see from the outside might create a strong lasting impression on them so you have to make an effort to improve its overall appeal as well.
Here are some tips for staging the exterior of your home:
1. Clean up your flower gardens.
2. Make your home look inviting by setting up chairs up on your deck.
3. Clean up your porch.
4. Clean up the flowerbeds and put some solar garden lights in your front yard to allow for nighttime showings.
5. Put down a colorful carpet and display some vibrant colored pillows in your sunroom to accentuate the colors that you have.
Remove all Traces of Your Dog
It doesn’t matter if your dog is clean and doesn’t shed—when staging your home, hide all evidence of your pet. If you want to make a good first impression on prospective buyers, hide the toy bones, dog bed and everything that they can associate with animals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aT4smA7Ko0
TIP # 4: CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN
All the efforts you make to decorate your home will become useless if you don’t make everything inside and outside your home sparkle. If you want to sell your home quickly, make sure that everything is clean—from the windows, furniture, the bathrooms, down to your yard. What creates the most impression on prospective buyers is the neatness and cleanliness of your home, so making sure everything inside and outside your home is sparkling clean is the way to go.
Consider these quick cleanup tips to get your home ready for spur-of-the-moment visits of potential buyers:
1. Wipe Away. Since the toilet and kitchen are usually two of the sloppiest areas of a home, you can start your cleanup there. If you want to quick-clean these areas, use disposable wipes to wipe away the visible dirt.
2. Use a Scented Cleaner for Your Toilet Bowls. One of the biggest hacks to making something look clean is making it smell great. If you don’t have much time to clean your bathroom, you can just put a small amount of your favorite scented cleaner in your toilet bowl and voila! Your bathroom is ready for unexpected visitors.
3. Use a Tile Spray Cleaner for the Walls. Each time you shower, make it a habit to use a tub and tile spray cleaner and turn on the hot water for a few minutes. This way, you are able to loosen the dirt and grime lurking in the corners of your bathroom without putting much effort and your walls stay clean even without extra cleaning.
4. Make Sure Your Cleaning Materials are Always Ready. Making sure that you are ready for visitors means always getting your cleaning materials ready. Always keep a bucket of your cleaning materials on each floor of your home so when prospective buyers arrive, you no longer have to go up and down the stairs to search for them.
5. Clean as You Go. One of the best ways to get yourself ready for prospective buyers’ surprise visits is to always clean as you go. When you make it a habit to wipe up spills as they happen, you make quick cleanups less of a chore for you.
TIP # 5: FIND A REALTOR YOU CAN TRUST
You can never underestimate the value of a great realtor when it comes to selling a home. If there is someone who understands the real estate business better than you, that’s your real estate agent. With her help, you will be able to price your home right and sell your home quickly. She may also let you visit open houses in your neighborhood to see your competition and find ways to make your home stand out.
7 Benefits of Using a Real Estate Agent:
1. She will list your house at the right price.
Because real estate agents understand the market better than you do, you can be sure that she will be able to list your house at the right price. Compared with listing the property yourself, this benefits you more. While there are other means to get a home estimate online, those methods are rarely accurate.
2. She will ensure that your presentations go smoothly.
Home presentations are key to selling a home fast nowadays. With a real estate agent to assist you, you will be able to make sure that your presentations go smoothly when prospective buyers check out your home. Agents have tons of experience in staging homes so you will never go wrong with one around to assist you.
3. She will give you more buyer exposure.
When buyers look for properties to purchase, they often get in touch with real estate agents to help them find homes that are currently listed on the market. Since buyers usually look at homes that are listed by an agent, having an agent to assist you will work to your advantage as this will help your home get more showings and offers. Agents have contacts with buyers, so when you list with an agent, you also give yourself access to buyers who are shopping for homes with their own agents.
4. She will dramatically impact the offers you receive from buyers.
Working with an agent when selling your home increases your chances of getting higher offers for your home. An agent does not only make sure that your home is seen by as many buyers as possible, she also ensures that all the aspects of the home buying process are handled in a professional manner. As a result, higher offers for your home come in.
5. She negotiates inspection results.
Inspections are crucial in the sale of a home. If you have a real estate agent to assist you, you can trust that you have someone to handle this aspect of the sale and give you expert advice.
6. She helps speed up the entire home selling process.
While it usually takes time to sell a home, having a real estate agent helps speed up the process significantly. Since home selling involves tons of paperwork, it helps a lot to hire an agent to take care of all the paperwork in every step of the process.
7. She sells your home for more money.
When you list with an agent, you can be sure that you will be able to sell your home for more than when you do it by yourself.
THE BOTTOM LINE
When selling your home, believe that your efforts will pay off. By following these tips, you will be able to set your home apart from the other homes on the market and sell it in a week or less. Doing these things will not only speed up the entire selling process but will also get you the best price in the least possible time.
If you need an agent to help you sell your home, call me, Lea Deo, at 913-233-9547. As your top real estate agent in Shawnee KS, I will take care of all the home selling details and issues on your behalf and before you know it, I have already sold your home!
In case you cannot view this video here, please click the link below to view Secrets to Selling your Shawnee KS Home in a Week or Less on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1vVTs94bWU&feature=youtu.be
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