Prepare Your Home For an Open House
When trying to sell your house, there are many things you can do to make it stand out among all the other houses that are for sale. It is very important for the potential buyer to be able to see themselves living in your home. Therefore, you will have to depersonalize your home. What this means is, you’ll have to make your home look like a model home.
The first thing you should do when preparing your home for an open house is remove all photographs you have around your home of you, your friends and family. Pictures will only remind the buyer that someone else is currently living in the home.
You should de-clutter your home as much as possible. You want your home to look very spacious when selling it. Do your best to make sure you don’t have any small nick-nacks lying around because they make your home look disorganized. If you have storage bins, stack them neatly in a corner or put them in a closet. If your refrigerator has magnets, photos, and/or notes on it, remove them. Your kitchen should look immaculate and those things make it look sloppy. Clean your bathroom thoroughly, including the bathtub, sink and walls of the shower. Bathrooms and kitchens are what sell homes so you want to make sure that yours leave a good impression.
Make sure you dust EVERYWHERE before a showing. Someone who is not familiar with your house will notice if it is dusty and that may lead them to believe that your house is not clean. Again, people need to be able to imagine themselves in your home, and if they think it is not clean they will move on. Make sure your television screen is not dusty. If you have ceiling fans, be sure to dust the blades. Check every corner to make sure that dust has not accumulated there.
If you have window sills, make sure those are clean. Use a glass cleaner for your mirrors and glass table tops. Empty the bathroom and kitchen garbage so that your house does not smell like old food. Open windows to air out the rooms and use a light air freshener, not too much, so that your home has a pleasant scent.
One last tip, do not stay around for the showing. Leave your house so that people can look around comfortably. They won’t be able to imagine themselves in your home if you are there. You definitely want people to see your home as theirs so they will want to buy it from you!
