Home selling checklist: what you need to consider

February 26, 2021 4

Owning a house is one of the best financial decisions you can make. The value of a home and its land appreciate over time. If you keep them well-maintained, you can sell them for more than what you paid for in a few decades — or even just years.

What’s great about selling a home in 2021 is that it’s forecasted to be a seller’s market for the first few months of the year. This means that buyer demand in the housing market exceeds the number of homes for sale in the market. Home buyers in NC (North Carolina) are sure to compete with each other for the house you’re selling.

Home selling pitfalls

As profitable as selling your property is, however, it’s a time-consuming and difficult task. You have to set your place up for physical and virtual viewings. As if it isn’t unusual enough to have strangers poke around your house, you also have to deal with their criticism and haggling.

If you don’t have the knowledge and experience in real estate, home selling can be a nightmare. There’s no room for mistakes. If you make one, you may end up selling your home at a price you’re not satisfied with. A great way to avoid these issues is to have a checklist of what you need to consider before listing your house on the market. This way, you know that your property is in its best condition for buyers to check out.

Start your home selling checklist

It can be difficult to figure out what to do or where to start. You want to make sure you’re spending on renovations or fixes that aren’t going to take too much time or require too much money. So what should you focus on?

Start with the outside

While the phrase “never judge a book by its cover” may work in a lot of settings, this is not the case for real estate. Your home needs to have good curb appeal to make a good first impression for your buyers. Curb appeal refers to how attractive your property looks when people view it from the sidewalk or curb. You can improve this in a variety of ways.

Improve your front door

Your front door is the first thing that buyers will interact with within your home. If it sounds hollow when they knock on it or the locks and knobs are flimsy, it’s a red flag for buyers. Your door needs to be both secure and good-looking. Replace the knobs and locks with new, robust ones. If your door is rotting, install a new one made of hardwood or steel.

Upgrade your landscaping

If you want to engage in some DIY, work on your lawn and garden. Clean and trim the grass. Add some color to your porch with plant containers. Your local gardening store surely has them. Choose plants and pots that complement your home’s existing look.

Renew siding and paint

Get an exterior upgrade by adding a new coat of paint. Cover the scratches and chips that the old coat may have left behind. Replace your rotting siding with a new batch. You could also explore new siding materials like modified wood, fiber-cement, and stucco.

Keep your house squeaky clean

Weird smells and sticky surfaces are a red flag for customers. Make sure to clean every crevice of your house. If there are foul smells that you just can’t clean off, it might be a sign of pests or plumbing issues. Schedule an inspection and repair from a professional to solve these problems as soon as possible.

Once you think you’ve cleaned off all the problems, go for a walk outside. If you enter your house and the usual weird smells don’t greet you, you’ve done a great job.

Depersonalize your home

Decluttering is a step forward in getting your home sale-ready. After all, you don’t want your buyers to see your property as a disorganized mess. Once you’ve cleaned your house, you should also consider depersonalizing it. This means removing your personal items like family photos, the Bob Ross painting you copied that one weekend, and others. You want future homeowners to see your house as a blank canvas that they can use to express their idea of home.

A neutral paint

One way to improve your home’s interior is a fresh coat of paint. However, you shouldn’t just pick your favorite color and paint your walls with it. Choose a neutral color like Pewter Neutral or Cream. They’re pleasing on the eyes and add to the idea that your house is a canvas for your buyers to paint on once they move in.

Selling your home can get overwhelming if you don’t have the knowledge and experience in interior design and real estate. If you want your home to meet or even exceed your expected value, add these tasks to your home selling checklist.