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.