When you are selling your house, you want the maximum value for it. And that’s why you try to sugarcoat the house’s weaknesses and exaggerate its plus points. However, there are more things you can do with your house than just verbal surety.
When the potential buyers are coming to visit your house for sale, it should be as upstaged as possible. And there are tips for that. What’s more, you can do these for yourself.
These small hacks can go a long way to increasing your house’s value. Check them out below!
1. Make effort where it’s most valuable
When you are showing your house to a buyer, you tend to make sure that every corner of the house stays spotless. While it’s a good approach to influence buyers, it’s not the best one.
Since Toronto real estate market is very competitive, you need to make efforts where they count the most. The main decision-influencers for most buyers are the kitchen, master bedroom, and living room. And these are the areas where you need to make sure everything stays polished and perfect.
Why spend so much time on that guest room or the bathrooms when they don’t even matter much? Make your effort where it matters the most.
2. Make the entrance extraordinary
While you spend so much time cleaning the floors inside when you are expecting potential buyers, it is also important to pay attention to the entrance of the house, because that’s the first thing that the buyers are going to see.
Don’t let your porch mess up with dried leaves and debris. Make sure that you have nice and fresh potted plants by the door. Even if you have a stoop, a welcome home doormat gives a good impression. If you have got a bigger porch, a set of outdoor chairs will definitely make it more welcoming.
Keep the porch lights on during the evening in case the potential buyers take a stroll around your house – they should be influenced to come inside.
3. Depersonalization
Depersonalization is a process where you detach yourself from the house to make it more “look like home” for the potential buyers. That includes putting away all the family photos and all the wall art that your toddler has stuck on the walls. Take off all the pictures, notes, and magnets from the refrigerator, and make sure no toys and clothes are lying around.
Make sure the counters on the kitchen and bathroom are empty except for the necessary things, like soap.
A buyer should be able to see the house as a place where they would be living, and something that is obviously personal and expressive of the current inhabitants of the house.
4. Upstage the furniture
Why would you buy a new sofa for the visitors when you are not even planning to give your furniture away with the house?
Well, it’s true! The visitors aren’t there for the living room couch, but the old, sweat one with sewing patches isn’t helping your house look like the best of it. So, it is important to upstage the furniture too.
Make sure the beds are made and the bedsheets are looking decent if not fancy. All the couches and sofas should be cleaned and, if there are cushions on the sofa, they should all be sitting in the same way.
5. Don’t leave the tables empty
There might be a few tables in the house; one in the living room, one in the kitchen, maybe a side table or a desk sitting somewhere by the door. Don’t leave those empty, strategize them.
A dining table should have a bowl of fruits sitting on it to give away a good, decent impression. If there is a desk around the house, keep a newspaper or a set of magazines on it. A living room table can have a TV remote or a bowl of peanuts sitting on top.
These small gestures make the buyers think about what they would put there if they buy the house – it means they already see themselves buying it.
6. Have a snack ready
It is common for the current residents to bake cookies, brownies, or have a packet of chips opened up for potential buyers. While a delicious cookie or a salty snack isn’t going to influence their decision about buying the house, it can definitely make them stay longer – and that might come in handy for you to show them the most amazing parts of the house.
