Preparing Your Home For A Quick Sale

Tips on how to let your home shine during an open home.

You’ve decided to sell your home – congratulations, it’s a big decision! Now, we bet you want to sell quickly.

The number one thing to remember when preparing your home for a quick sale is to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. A quick sale can be secured with some pre-planning, organising and cleaning. Take the advice offered to you by our team at Tomoro and you could be popping the celebratory champagne before you know it.

Tomoro Lead Agent says “The market will go up and down irrespective of your needs or your family’s priorities – there’s not much you can do about the market. However, there are steps you can take to prepare your home to impress the socks off prospective buyers and encourage a quick sale.”

Here are some of our sure-fire ways to prepare your house for ensuring a quick sale:

1.   Think smart, not emotionally.

If you’ve lived at your property for a considerable period of time you’ll have a thousand memories and breaking away from what you know so well can be tough.

Our tip is to make decisions thinking of the new buyers, and try to put the emotions to the side for now. They’ll be plenty of time to reminisce later on. For now, make decisions quickly, take smart action and think about what is going to look best and work best for a quick sale.

2.   Declutter the home.

A clean, neat and tidy house is a house that sells! Think about doing a weekend decluttering and following the 3 R’s (what can you reduce, reuse and recycle.

Decluttering goes for the garden as well. Once you get into declutter mode you’ll be surprised with how much “stuff” just lies around.

Not only will this help you create a clean space for inspections and open homes, it will help reduce the amount of “things” you need to pack and take with you!

3.   Create a blank canvas.

You want to create a space which a buyer can walk into and immediately start to imagine their own. A more neutral, cleaner space allows a buyer to see their own furniture and belongings filling the rooms (which is hard to do with a lot of your personal items, heirlooms and decorations filling the space).

If you’re living in your property as it goes to sale, try to make sure you have as little clutter, furniture and decor out as possible.

A fresh coat of paint in a neutral colour could help. You may love the bright magenta accent wall but a potential buyer could be put off by it!

If you’ve moved out by the time the property goes to sale, ensure that the space is clean and neat, ready for someone else to start building memories.

4.   Organise and clear storage cabinets and bedroom closets.

Buyers are mostly curious to know the availability of storage space. They will probably open and check the cabinets and closets – so make sure they’re organised, clean and neat, showing off how much space is available.

5.   Carry out any minor repairs that have been on the list.

You don’t want a buyer walking out of an open home with a mental list of repairs which they can see need completing. A buyer thinking of all the minor repairs they’ll need to budget for and carry out can either make or break your sale.

So go ahead and replace those cracked tiles or patch those holes in the walls. Fix any doors that do not close properly or leaky faucets and running toilets.

You want a buyer to walk through and think “there’s nothing I need to fix if I want to move in right away”.

6.   Let your home shine at open homes.

 Open homes and private inspections are really your home’s time to shine. This is the buyer’s chance to get a feel for the property and start to see themselves living in the space. So make it a very simple vision for them to achieve.

• If your property is large and you’re time poor, considering hiring a professional cleaning team for preparing your home for a quick sale.
• Deep clean your home including things like washing your doors and windows inside out, all bathrooms, kitchen, pantry and oven clean and all
• Before your first inspection or open home try to avoid cooking foods that emanate specific odours including garlic, cabbage, or fish (as the smells tend to linger even the day aher)!
• If you have pets at home, monitor different areas for signs of littering and clean them right away.
• Does your property have a garden? Ensure this is trimmed, lawns mowed, and there is no garden rubbish or debris lying around.
• On open day, open the windows, let in the natural light and consider putting on some music – basically, create an ambience that’s undeniably appealing.

7.   Write a personal note to potential buyers.

If you’ve truly loved living in your property and know the potential wonderful moments it can give to someone else, write out the things you’ve enjoyed about living there.

Maybe there’s a family of birds that visit every afternoon? Is the front deck perfect for a morning coffee?

Does the backyard have a big tree which gives the right amount of shade for a backyard picnic?

Is there a particularly warm spot in the house perfect for an afternoon nap?

All these little details can go a long way in showing a potential buyer what it’s like to live in the property.

There are plenty of ways you can help to encourage a quick sale and these are our top tips! If you’re looking to sell soon and want to enjoy a quick, seamless sale talk to our listing team now. Click here for a call back from one our Tomoro sales team members.