Dear Claire: What are Common Mistakes When Selling a Home?

Quick House Sale Secrets: Banishing Smells, Decluttering, and Price Perfection

Today on our Dear Claire series we are talking about, what you can do to make your house sell more quickly (without having to deal with all the things that you have to deal with)?

There’s some big NO’s that we’re going to talk about.

One big NO is of course smell. No smells. Ideally you want no smell because some people are super sensitive to smell. If you have to have smell than you could have cookie smell or open fresh air smell. Avoid those air fresheners because typically buyers think that you’re trying to hide something. Just open all the windows and doors and just leave them open for when the showing is going to happen.

The second thing is clutter. I have the kind of house that when I walk in the door after a long day, I throw my keys down on the table, and the mail, and all of that stuff accumulates. The problem is when people are looking at your house to purchase it. They want to see perfection. They want to see the staged home like you see on HGTV. What does that mean? It means even though you have no pantry, and you have nowhere to store stuff, try to put it away so that they don’t see it. They don’t want to know that there’s no pantry and that you don’t have room for your kitchen stuff. So make sure you pack away all of that stuff, all of your extra books, all of your extra kitchen gear, all of the mail, all of the paperwork, all of your tax stuff that you’re trying to get through for April. Get rid of it and make your house look like no one lives there. Ideally that’s what you’re going to do.

Third the biggest problem with selling is price. So if both of those things don’t work, then you might want to revisit your price and see if there’s something you could do about that. Talk to your agent and see if anything should change.

I really appreciate you tuning in today. If you have any questions email me and I can address it in a future Dear Claire and subscribe to our YouTube channel. There’s Dear Claire maintenance videos, and all kinds of fun stuff on there.

Have a wonderful day. Take care.

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