How do you prepare your home for sale? Ideally, quickly and at the best possible price? By embracing the concept of home staging, which involves using techniques to make your apartment or villa more attractive to potential buyers.
You already know that before opening your doors to visitors, you need to do a thorough cleaning. But that's not enough! There are small details related to organization, cleanliness, decoration, and renovation that you absolutely must know to enhance your property in the real estate market and sell your house quickly.
Continue reading to discover tips for preparing your home, streamlining the rental or sales process, and adding value to your property.
How to Prepare Your Home for Sale?
Before we dive into tips on how to prepare your home for sale, it's important to explain the concept of home staging. Originating in the 1970s in the United States due to a surplus of real estate, home staging shows how to make a property more appealing through quick, functional, and affordable organization, cleaning, and decoration. In other words, you need to take some care to ensure that the potential future resident gets a good first impression and is eager to buy. You'll get to know these considerations right away!
1. Empty
As soon as you decide to sell your house, the first thing to do is empty it. Anything that isn't essential should go! There's no other way to "increase" your home's usable space and give potential buyers the chance to imagine their own furniture and decorating style in each room, which makes decision-making easier.
So, carefully examine each space and see how many things are excessive. For example, why not remove the carpet from the living room and the two bookshelves filled with books? Sooner or later, you'll have to do it. And, by the way, the dining room table with eight chairs. Can't you start having meals in the kitchen to make your living room look bigger and sell your house more quickly?
Tips for Emptying Before Selling Your House
- Depersonalize your home by packing away personal items you don't need, such as family photos in frames. This helps buyers visualize the house as their own.
- Get rid of all unnecessary objects, like excessive furniture and decorations. The more free space, the better chance of selling your house quickly.
- Keep only the essentials to make your home look like a model apartment that gives visitors an idea (only!) of each room's purpose.
- Pack away items that won't be needed during this process of selling your house, such as out-of-season clothes and shoes, sheets and towels, books, and your children's toys, etc.
- Store these boxes in the storage room, pantry, attic, or a rented warehouse.
These tips don't work for you because you want to sell a furnished house?
Well, in that case, make sure the furniture you want to sell is in perfect condition, well cleaned, and arranged to show the true size of the space. For example, do you want to sell the bookshelves in your living room? Great, but you certainly won't sell them filled with books. So, take this opportunity to remove them and highlight the amount of usable space that the future owner will have with those bookshelves.
Also, use your furniture and decoration items to emphasize your home's strengths. For instance, if the living room has a fireplace, position the furniture to highlight it. And opt for neutral decoration to attract a wider audience when selling your house.
Finally, include in the property description a detailed list of the furniture and decorative items included in the sale. This helps potential buyers further appreciate the property.
2. Clean
Now that you've gotten rid of a bunch of furniture and objects, and your home looks much larger, it's time to clean and make each room shine because a clean and well-maintained home conveys a sense of confidence to visitors.
Fingerprints on the windows? Shelves covered in dust? Dirty laundry on the bed? Toys scattered around the living room? No way! To sell your house, you need to start cleaning.
Cleaning Tips Before Selling Your House
Not all rooms are equally important. Generally, the kitchen and bathroom are the rooms used to assess cleanliness and must be sparkling (literally) to make buyers comfortable with the idea of using them. Therefore, to sell your house, you need to remove any traces of limescale from the bathroom, thoroughly clean the stove and refrigerator, and neatly store dishes and groceries inside the kitchen cabinets (yes, because visitors might open them).
Start the general cleaning of your home from the ceiling and work your way down. Clean lamps, fans, and shelves before reaching the floor: this prevents dirt from falling onto already clean areas.
In addition to spacious rooms, real estate agency clients look for homes with plenty of natural light. So, it's essential to have the windows' glass cleaned inside and out. The same goes for mirrors, as they make spaces appear larger when they're sparkling.
To sell your house, don't neglect the entrance hall! It's the first area that visitors see and should make a good first impression. Besides being clean, the hall should be free of shoes, coats, umbrellas, etc.
Air out your home before potential buyers' visits and eliminate any odors, especially if you smoke indoors or have pets. A thorough cleaning often eliminates bad odors, but if you want, you can use air fresheners (sparingly!) or scented candles. And it's worth mentioning that you should avoid cooking foods with strong odors before receiving a visit. On the contrary, feel free to create a good impression by preparing a pot of fresh coffee and baking a cake.
Remember that cleanliness and organization can help you sell your house, increasing the perceived value of the property. Dedicate time and effort to a thorough cleaning before putting your house up for sale.
3. Organize
While you're doing a deep clean, tidy up and organize every room. In addition to conveying a sense of tidiness, organizing your home is crucial for creating a good first impression, making the space feel larger, and attracting more people.Organization also helps highlight your home's features and details, such as quality furniture, well-maintained floors, and a fully equipped kitchen, and facilitates cleaning and maintenance during visits and open house days.
Tips for Organizing Before Selling Your House
Depersonalize! Remove all personal items, such as photographs, trophies, religious items, sports accessories, and collections, before selling your house. Even toothbrushes should be out of sight because buyers are more inclined to buy impersonal homes that feel like a hotel rather than homes that seem tailored for another family, where they feel like intruders.
- Organize the furniture to create a sense of space and arrange it to create a natural flow in the rooms.
- Ensure the house has a comfortable room temperature and smells good: a pleasant aroma can create a welcoming atmosphere.
- Open blinds and curtains to maximize natural light during the visit. This simple gesture can help you sell your house more easily.
- Turn off the TV and radio to avoid distracting visitors. And if you play music, make sure it's very discreet!
- Take care of the garden, if applicable, by keeping the lawn mowed, pruning plants, and keeping the entrance tidy because the first impression of your home starts from the outside.
4. Decorate
You may need to redecorate your property to turn it into a true model home, but do so with simplicity and minimalism, following the "less is more" logic.
Again, you can use staging to sell your house, hiring an interior design professional to decorate in a neutral but elegant style, making your home more attractive to buyers. Staging may include the use of temporary furniture and accessories to highlight the strengths of each room, making the space more appealing to a broad target audience.
Tips for Decorating Before Selling Your House
- Opt for neutral colors like white, beige, or light gray, which make spaces appear larger and more inviting.
- Choose pleasant textures such as soft and cozy fabrics (velvet pillows, wool blankets, thick fabric curtains) and add natural materials like wood, stone, and natural fibers to create a sense of connection with nature.
- Arrange furniture to open up space and ensure balance and harmony in all rooms of the house.
- Highlight your property's strengths (like a fireplace, high ceiling, or panoramic view) with appropriate decor items.
- Use elegant accessories like curtains, rugs, and artworks to add charm to the rooms of the house.
- Invest in new decorative details that help make your apartment or villa more attractive, such as pillows, lamps, candles, and plants.
- Keep it simple, avoiding excessive or overly personal decorations, like family photos all over the place. Visitors should be able to imagine themselves living in your home, and overly personal decor can get in the way.
- If natural light doesn't reach all areas of the house, add artificial light. Use bright bulbs and consider adding accent lamps in some rooms, such as the living room and kitchen.
Do you have an apartment with a terrace or a villa with a yard? Make sure the floor is clean and the garden well-maintained. If possible, add some potted plants to make the outdoor area more attractive when selling your house.
5. Improve
Regardless of when your home was built, you can make improvements to attract the attention and interest of potential buyers without spending too much money. Small repairs and renovations in used houses add value to the property and help you sell quickly, at a higher selling price, with a positive financial return.
Tips for Improving Before Selling Your House
- Invest in a fresh coat of paint — in white or neutral colors — to eliminate wall stains and, at the same time, convey cleanliness and brightness. But beware, correct any damage or cracks in the walls before painting to sell your house.
- Check if you need to repair or replace blinds, shutters, frames, electrical outlets, door handles, baseboards, drawers, bulbs, etc.
- Take care of all the small repair jobs needed to fix water leaks, stuck doors, cracked tiles, and broken switches, for example. Modernize furniture with paint, new handles, or new doors.
- Replace the floors if they're heavily worn. A new or freshly restored floor can make a big difference in the overall appearance of the house.
- Ensure that your home's essential systems, such as plumbing, electricity, heating, and air conditioning, are in good working condition.
- If your budget allows, make substantial improvements in the kitchen and bathroom by replacing countertops, cabinets, appliances, and fixtures. Update with modern accessories like faucets, showers, and mirrors.
- Also, make energy-efficient improvements to sell your house, such as replacing conventional windows with double-glazed windows or adopting a more sustainable heating system. In addition to adding value to the property, you can attract people interested in saving on energy bills!
- Take care of the garden, replace the fence, and repair the garage door, for example.
Cleaning, organization, decoration, repair, renovation... Renovations to sell your house should be chosen carefully, as not all of them have a guaranteed financial return. Consulting an experienced real estate agency — such as
Engel & Völkers Portimão — can help you determine which repairs are the most important and valuable for the market.