Sequim Real Estate Blog by Professional Real Estate provides answers to important questions for buyers and sellers in our area.
Whenever anyone decides to sell a home, they’re concerned with mostly two things: “How much can I sell it for, and how quickly can I sell it?”
As it turns out, those are exactly the same questions house flippers ask themselves when working on a project. In fact, those who buy, improve and sell houses for a living stake their professional success on selling homes quickly and for the highest possible price.
So maybe it makes sense for traditional home sellers to get some tips from the professionals when it comes to selling a home fast and for top dollar. Here are some lessons house flippers could teach traditional sellers.
Paint it
Flippers sometimes must remove and replace fixtures, doors, drywall and more from a home they’re rehabbing. But just about everything they don’t take out, they repaint. All of it – walls, doors, baseboards, cabinets, and ceilings. Sequim Real Estate Blog suggests that a fresh coat of paint immediately makes a home more appealing to buyers.
Clean it
Once the construction is finished on a rehabbed home, it is cleaned thoroughly and kept meticulously cleaned throughout the sales process. Bringing potential buyers through a home that’s white-glove clean is the goal for every single showing. Hiring a cleaning service to do an initial deep clean, then weekly maintenance cleaning is the norm. The goal is to get it super clean, then keep it super clean.
Stage it
People like to envision their own belongings in a home, but it can be difficult to visualize that in a completely empty house. Homes with furnishings that serve as examples of how the home can function and how it appears best usually sell faster than vacant homes. You can hire a professional home stager to help your home put its best foot forward, or you can lease furniture and décor and do it yourself.
Floor it
One of the easiest fixes for a dated home is floor coverings. If you have older carpet in a home, replace it. If you have old hardwood or tile floors that have seen better days, it’s not very expensive to install new hard-surface flooring. Products such as luxury vinyl tile can often cost nearly as little as carpeting and can be installed by an amateur who’s a little handy. One of the first things a buyer sees when they enter a home is the floor, and they continue to see floors throughout their tour of the home. So flooring has to be attractive.
Light it
Another easy fix to make a dated home look newer is changing light fixtures. They’re something that seems to constantly go in and out of style, and finishes and glass can become discolored with time. Switching out old fixtures for fresh ones is something home sellers can do by themselves and can be a pretty big bang-for-your-buck move.
Spruce it
You hear the term “curb appeal” all the time when it comes to homes, and there’s a good reason. A potential buyer gets the first impression of a home as soon as they pull into the driveway. A home’s exterior and landscaping probably aren’t going to be the reason someone buys the home, but they can easily be the reason someone DOESN’T buy it. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
List it
Some house flippers have become good enough at marketing to sell homes themselves. But even those who are good marketers will approach real estate agents and offer a commission to anyone who brings in the buyer of the home. The full-on “for sale by owner” route isn’t optimal even for those who buy and sell homes for a living, so enlisting the help of a good real estate professional is something a traditional home seller should probably copy.
We hope our Sequim Real Estate Blog provides you some of the answers you need. If you’re looking to buy or sell a home in Sequim, the experts at Professional Real Estate would be happy to help. We welcome your questions and would be happy to discuss your real estate goals.