Return of the dreaded Clutter

This is a rerun of an earlier post, but one of the most basic rules about getting your home ready to sell!! I was showing a nice looking home yesterday that i had not previewed. When we got to the finished basement rec-room we discovered it was being used for a teenager's (we assume) bedroom/rock band practice room and general junk storage. There was so much stuff in there we could not even walk around and were afraid of what we might find amongst all of the junk. Needless to say we moved on to the next house. It would have been a challenge for the sellers to clean up all of that stuff (just from the volume of it), but it is going to have to be done when (or if) the house sells so why not do it before the house is on the market so potential buyers can actually see the rooms and not have to worry about tripping over piles of cloths, instruments and other misc teen junk? When you are selling your home it is like you are a retail store. You would not go to a store that has junk all over the floor or dirty dishes all over the kitchen would you? While talking about junk it also important that if you cannot get rid of most of it, at least be sure the doors can open into rooms and people can reach the light switches. Twice this week I could not get into a garage because there was so much junk it had fallen in front of the door so it would not open. Messy houses do not show well and will take longer to sell and they will not get as high of price than a clean, neat home. Cleaning up junk is by far the cheapest thing to do to raise its value. I know i have written about it before, but it is really important and my buyer's reaction to the messy houses we have seen this week were perfect examples of that.

What to Update to get you home ready to Sell

This post is a tough one. There is no single answer to the question of what to update in your home to increase the value and help it sell faster. Once you have done the easy, inexpensive stuff like cleaning up the yard, removing a lot of clutter and painting, the rest is a matter of money and how much you can spend. The biggest updates that help sell a house for more are the kitchens and bathrooms. If you are not a contractor, these projeccts are probably not something a do-it-yourselfer should try to tackle. You can spend $20-40,000 on a kitchen and $10,000 for each bathroom. Surveys have shown you only get about 90% return on your money for the updates. So those items may not be the best thing to try to accomplish just to get your house sold. I just did comparables for a seller in the Thrashers Corner area of Bothell and there was $100,000 difference in the selling price of nearly identical homes that had been completely updated vs ones that had not. Of course the updates cost $100,000 so it would be a wash for making money when you are trying to sell. Here is my list of updates i would do from the least expensive to the most. I cannot say exactly how much each of them would gain you in price, but even the cheapest will help your house sell faster. 1. Cleaning. You will have to clean up to move anyway, why not make your house look like a model home to start with? The only expense is your labor. Isn't that what kids are for? Get them to help keep the house clean for showings. 2. Yard work. Get those over grown shrubs and bushes trimmed back, the lawn mowed and the flower garden planted with fresh flowers and new bark. Might cost $100 and will make an inviting first impression. 3. Paint. Inside and out. You may love that bright pink room with pink shades, or the deep blue bedroom with the funny wallpaper around the edges, but most buyers will not. Keep it neutral. This one will cost several thousand dollars if you are not skilled at painting, but will definatly give you a good return on investment. 4. Update the light fixtures. No one likes those old 60's bedroom lights anymore. You can get nice ones for $15-20 and it is amazing how much better it makes a room look. 5. Sink fixtures for the bath and kitchen. This will set you back $3-400, but will help update the rooms without spending thousands. 6. Baseboards and window and door trim. This is another one that is best left to the professionals. An poor job on trim will be worse than not doing them at all. This is another multi-thousand dollar job, but it will give your home an updated look. When we replaced the windows in our home we redid all of the trim and it is unbelievable the difference it makes in the look of our house. It was about $3,000 and well worth it. 7. Floor coverings. Pick the worst areas to do first. If the kitchen or bathroom floors are nasty do them and leave the carpet. If there are dog stains and worn spots on the carpets then that is where you need to go first. Keep the colors neutral and put in a medium grade. This is a big item so allow $3-5,000. If your carpets are shot this will make the biggest difference in the value of your home. In the next segment i will continue this conversation.

Lighting Helps Sell Your Home

When it comes to lighting to help sell your home, more is better. Nothing turns off a prospective buyer more than a dark house (except bad smells which we covered in the earlier blog). The first thing is to update any ceiling mounted room lighting. Most older houses still have the original light fixtures from the 80's or even the 70's. New fixtures are only about $25-$40 and make a world of difference in a room. If you cannot change the fixture at least put in new brighter bulbs to lighten the rooms. Make sure all lights work and the glass covers are clean. Dead bugs in the light cover are really icky. Be sure to clean them up. When we moved into our house the living room did not have any over head lights and we only had 2 table lamps for a giant room. There are a lot of windows so during the day it is fine, but at night you could hardly read a newspaper in the living room. We finally installed track lighting on a beam in the ceiling with 5 flouresent flood lights and it makes a world of difference in the way the room looks and feels. I cannot believe we lived here 20 years before we added those lights. If you really want to go all out you can change out the light switches to the new style. They cost a little more than the standard ones, but look so much nicer than the old wornout original ones. When someone is coming to view your home, be sure to turn on every light in the house. It makes it more inviting and shows the prospective buyer how light and bright your home can be. It also makes it way easier for the buyers coming through to not have to figure out how to turn on the lights. One really fancy house i was trying to show had a bank of light 8 light switches on one wall. i figured that would turn on just about everything, but it did not do anything at all. There was a single switch in another room that activated all of the lights in the house and it took me about 10 minutes of trial and error to find that switch. Also if there is under counter lighting or over stove lighting in the kitchen turn them on too. It really brings out the warmth and charm when those little accent lights are on.