What To Do Before Your Open House
The open house serves one purpose. It is to get potential buyers into your home and enticed by all the positives. To make sure they have a positive experience, you need to make sure the home is going to shine for them.
A home is where life happens. That means it is hardly spic and span most of the time. Once you decide to sell, the home is no longer a part of your life. It is simply a product that must be moved off the shelf. That means tuning it up.
Consider the view from the various windows in your home. If there is a positive view, pull back all drapes and blinds so there is a clear and obvious view of it. If the view is not so hot, leave the drapes and blinds down, but sort of open.
Every family produces lots of trash. In contrast, products should not come with trash. Your home is now a product. Remove all trash in the home. Yes, from trash bins. Also, make sure the bins in the home do not stink to high heaven.
Bathrooms are important areas buyers pay close attention to. If you have shower doors, they should be immaculate. Clean them twice. Make sure there are no streaks. Squeegees work well for this.
Just as important as the shower doors are the toilet. It should be clean from top to bottom. Do not forget the exterior foot area or the back of the toilet where it presses up close to the wall. Sellers will definitely look.
Another vital room is the kitchen. Buyers will inspect it like a diamond. Everything, and I mean everything, should be sparkling. The kitchen is a room that can make or break a sale. Bake an apple pie to make sure it smells nice as well.
The entire kitchen is vital, but the stove is of particular importance. The top burners should be clean as should the area below. The baking areas should also be sparkling. Remove anything that remotely looks like it does not belong.
The refrigerator is another area in the kitchen that will be looked at closely. It should be gleaming. Remove the shelves and clean everything. Make sure to include the ice box when you do the work.
Now make sure to walk the home and remove the clutter. In this case, clutter includes family members and pets. They should not be present at the open house no matter how cute you might think them.
I cannot emphasize enough that you must focus on the fact you are selling a product, not your home. Think of selling an old car. What did you do? You cleaned it up as much as possible and treated it as a product. Do the same with your home.
