Dear Claire: How Can I Prepare to Sell My Home in the Summer?

Enhancing Your Home’s Allure: A Visual Guide to Preparing for Sale

First off, you want to look at curb appeal. This is a pretty good trick. Go outside and click a picture of your house from the exterior, and just look at it. A lot of times when you’re walking in and out of your house all day long, you don’t really notice the things that other people are going to notice. However, if you’re looking at a picture of it, you’re going to notice the things that you generally don’t notice. Like the plant that you had it in a container that’s dead. Now that’s sitting at your front doorstep. You could probably use another plant in it or you know, other minor things like, “Oh that gutter looks like it needs some help, it’s falling down.”

The reason, obviously, that you do this is because the first interaction that the buyer’s going to have with your property is a picture online. It’s really useful to look at it and say, “Oh, that’s what a front picture of my house is going to look like.” The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) requires it. We put a front door picture or front of the house picture on first. So, that is literally going to be the first interaction that any buyer has with regards to your home.

Then, walk around the exterior and take a look. I mean, everyone’s always got those projects that they started, and they just never finished. And right now, with the rain, it’s probably not a great time to do it, but you can write a list of stuff that you need to do. For instance, at my house, the pile of bricks that I have been meaning to make a patio and they still haven’t been piled up on the side of the house. All kinds of stuff. I mean, like, I went outside my backyard yesterday and I had a spade just sticking out of it.

See what you find when you walk around your house. Look at it with a critical eye. Then do the same thing with your interior. Go take a picture of your living room, take a picture of your dining room, and then look at the pictures and see what kind of strikes you. You know, maybe you have packed that living room. You can take some time to take the furniture that you might not want in there or give it away or, you know, just plan to slowly chip away at the things that need to be done.

In the spring, you might have been thinking about moving and wondered if you can start looking at houses to find the perfect house that you want to buy to replace this one. It’s going to be a mad dash to the finish, so it’s much more tolerable to just be like, “I’m going to slowly knock a few things off my list, day by day.” as opposed to, “I’m not going to sleep for seven days to get all of this stuff done.”

You could do both, but I am here to tell you the slow and steady is a heck of a lot easier to manage. I would be happy to talk you through the process and talk to you about where the market is, and what you can expect. What it’s going to be like and all that fun stuff. Hopefully, you’ll get your mind thinking about where you want to go, and where you want to be in the next six months to a year. Of course, make sure on the top of that list you write down, “Call Claire.”

As always. I’m here with any questions you might have. So, please reach out with any additional questions that you have brought here to answer. I hope you have a wonderful day and we’ll talk soon. Take care.

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