It's plain common sense that homes in fine condition are much more likely to sell quickly, but what you might not already know is that there has been some specific research applied in this regard.
According to a survey carried out by Keller Williams, homes in good to excellent condition sold 18 days faster than others. An impressive statistic, made even more meaningful because they also sold for higher prices and with fewer reductions from the original asking price!
In this blog, we often talk about correctly staging your home. It would be fair to say, though, that most aspects of staging relate to presenting the home in its best light, no matter what its condition is.
Potential home buyers will be looking at the details of your home to closely evaluate its true condition. They may even ask a number of leading questions, such as "how often is the air conditioning serviced?" Any negative answers are likely to start chipping away at your asking price in the minds of the potential purchaser or, even worse, cause them to not even make an offer.
To achieve the optimum price, therefore, it's crucial that you do not give the buyer some valid reasons to start thinking about a lower offer than you might wish to hear.
Of course there is often a trade off between the home condition and what the present owner can afford to maintain/improve. Indeed, it could even be the case that you bought your present home, knowing its deficiencies and, for reasons of lack or time and/or money, you never got round to them until it became time to sell and move on.
Our advice to you, therefore, is to not only try to budget for regular home maintenance, but also to save money where you can by using good old DIY, wherever that is completely safe and practical. It's going to pay off in a big way when you're looking to maximize your return from a house sale.
The convincing statistics that we started with prove the very close relationship between matching your buyer's aspirations and getting the right result from your point of view.
Maybe a great place to start is to draw up a list of outstanding maintenance tasks that you can either easily afford to pay someone to do or which you can safely do yourself.
Call us if you'd like more specific advice on proritizing tasks in readiness for your home sale. We'll be happy to assist.
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