How To Sell Your House Fast – 9 Tips To Get The Most From Your Home Sale

thumb

Due to the credit crisis and recession, there are a lot of houses for sale. Homeowners who are trying to avoid foreclosure are selling many of these homes. Needless to say, it’s a buyer’s market and homeowners need to know all the tricks to help them sell their homes quickly. Fortunately, there are proven techniques that you can use to help you sell your home quicker and some of these will even help you get more money for your home.

Tips To Sell Your Home In A Buyer’s Market

To make sure your home sells in a buyer’s market, there are a few things that you could do. Here are 9 home improvement techniques to help you sell your home more quickly:

1. Make sure you are selling at the right price

I know it’s very difficult to sell your home for less than what you bought it for a few years ago. It’s even harder if you’re upside down on your home loan.  But you can’t insist on unrealistic price if you want to sell your home in a down market. To find the right price, you can check other homes for sale in your area, check web sites like Zillow and HomeGain, or get an appraisal.

Although you can’t compete with banks that are selling foreclosed homes, you’ll be in a much better position to compete against other sellers who aren’t as flexible on price.

2. Remove clutter from your home

decluttered interior
Photo by Annahape via Flickr

No one wants to buy a messy rat hole. So make sure your house is clean and organized. Remove as much clutter as you can, even if you have to store your stuff in storage. You can get an idea of how your home should look by browsing through magazines or even IKEA catalog. And here are some general tips to help guide you:

  • Tables, desks, and countertops should be mostly clear to show as much surface space as possible.
  • Remove family photos from walls, shelves, and fireplace mantle (if you have one). You want the potential buyers to picture themselves living in the house, not looking at your family history.
  • Remove any unnecessary furniture and put it into storage to give your house more living space.
  • Remove unnecessary electronics, extension cords, and power strips. Most buyers don’t care about your mega entertainment system. And you don’t want it to be obvious that your electrical system is old and lacking.
  • Remove clothing from your closets and put it into storage to make the closets feel bigger.
  • Remove all the extra clutter throughout the house to make it feel bigger and more spacious.

3. Improve your home curb appeal

curb appeal
Photo by MichiganMoves via Flickr

First impression means a lot, and for your home the name of the game is curb appeal. If you’re a fan of HGTV Curb Appeal, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The goal here is not to spend a lot of money to improve your home, rather you’re trying to do inexpensive things (that may require some sweat equity) to improve the appearance of your home. You want your home to look better than other houses in the area and in a “move in ready” condition.

Here are a few things you could do to improve your home curb appeal:

  • Trim hedges and mow your lawn.
  • Clean all windows and surfaces.
  • Repaint walls, doors, and trims in neutral colors.
  • Replace old window blinds or drapes, and update the window treatments.
  • Power wash or paint the exterior.

4. Fix problems around the house

Now go throughout the house room by room, and take notes of all the things that need fixing. Little things matter and they could turnoff your buyers.  If you noticed them, the buyer will too. Take the time to go around and fix those things one by one. Remember that fixing these small problems doesn’t have to be expensive, but it will take time and effort.

5. Learn the Art of Home Staging

home staging
Photo by Wonderlane via Flickr

Home staging is not decluttering and cleaning. Home staging goes beyond that and happens after the steps above. It involves much less tangible things that include:

  • Making the home smells fresh and airy. Some will even go as far as baking cookies before a showing to give the house a pleasant aroma.
  • Making sure the temperature is right. You want the potential buyer to feel comfortable.
  • Making sure rooms are properly lit by adjusting the window treatments and turning on/off lights.
  • Arranging pieces of furniture in an appealing manner.
  • Putting vases of fresh flowers on tables, or a small fruit basket on the dinning table.
  • Showcasing various fabrics, decors, and knickknacks.
  • Arranging items on shelves, bookcases and fireplace mantels to draw attention to predetermined areas.

You can read more about home staging at: Home Staging & Staging a House – What is Home Staging.

6. Leverage the power of the web to market your house

This is the Internet age and you should not let your agent limits your reach. Leverage online venues to help sell your house.  For example, put home for sale ads on Craigslist, Zillow, and HomeGain. Promote the house through your online social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also send out a copy of your listing to people on your email list to see if they know anyone that might be looking for a house in your neighborhood.

Use every channel that you have at your disposal!

7. Get a good agent to help you sell

In general, it’s better to work with an agent than trying to sell the house on your own. It’s their full time job to find buyers and show your home. This is harder than it looks and it’s generally better to leave this to the pro. However, you have to remember you’re the boss and that we are dealing with a lot of money here. So don’t just pick any agent that comes along. Call several real estate offices and ask to talk to their top sales agents. Make sure you are comfortable working with the person and ask questions. Here are some good questions you can ask your real estate agent.

Another important thing to remember is never go into an exclusive contract with your agent. You want to be able to fire your real estate agent if he or she sucks.

8. Be creative

This is a buyer’s market, but even so, a house is still very expensive for most people. If you have a buyer that needs help to close the deal, consider offering some sort of incentives to make the deal happens. For example, you can offer to cover some parts of the closing costs. This works especially well with first time homebuyers).

Be creative!

9. Don’t be there

When you are having an open house, leave the house. It’s uncomfortable for you to have strangers in your home, and likewise, it’s uncomfortable to be in other people’s home. So why create any more tension? Leave the house and let your real estate agent takes care of business. Let your buyers look around at their leisure without your scrutiny.

Selling your house in a down market isn’t easy, but you can do some work to make your chances better.  In the end your house will show better, and you’ll be able to sell your house that much quicker.

Do you have your own tips to help a home sell faster?  Were there things that you did when selling your house that made it more attractive to buyers?  Let us know about it in the comments section!

Read more about

real estate agent, tips to sell your home, clutter, home staging, curb appeal, social network, home value, zillow, clutter from your home, fireplace mantle

Recommended articles

Get free updates

  twitter  via Twitter
  twitter  via Facebook
  rss  via RSS or Email

Share this article

Pinyo
Pinyo is the brain behind Moolanomy personal finance blog and a few other web sites. If you like this article, please subscribe for free daily email updates.

All posts by Pinyo

9 Comments

  1. gravatar
    FFB
    August 26, 2009, 21:47

    Spot on! A lot of people can’t get past the fact that buyers don’t want to see their personal effects. A buyer wants to envision a house as if it’s their own. That means your tastes may not fit into the general public’s. Imagine making your place look like something out of a magazine. It’s not always easy but putting a few dollars into making your house appealing can earn you thousands or more on your sale.

    We’re in the process of closing on the sale of our co-op and I think a big reason we are is because of how our place looks. We have a neighbor with a similar sized co-op that’s been on the market longer but still hasn’t sold and they are offering a lower price. They just don’t get that it’s worth it to clean everything out.

  2. gravatar
    Mike
    August 26, 2009, 22:09

    This is a really good post. I love the “rat hole” usage. :)

    p.s. – it’s “Clutter” not “Clutters” – feel free to remove this line.

  3. gravatar
    Pinyo
    August 26, 2009, 22:27

    @FFB – Good luck. I guess you’re upgrading to a bigger place.

    @Mike – Thank you. I guess “clutters” would be a verb.

  4. gravatar
    Amanda Grossman
    August 29, 2009, 18:46

    I recently purchased a home with my fiancee (we are eleven days away from settling). We saw 19 other homes, but really fell in love with the last one we saw. Here are some tips from a buyer’s perspective: Add some ambiance (music playing, candles lit, etc.). Take care of the little details before showing the home, such as touching up old nail holes on the wall, dented crown molding, old door knobs, etc. because buyer’s will feel better about the condition of the rest of the home if it looks like it’s been taken cared of. Offer a list of local sights/things to do, services to use and leave it on the kitchen counter–this shows that you care about the buyer, and is a nice personal touch. If you are in the middle of finishing a project, such as retiling a countertop, put the materials near the project to show that it will be completed before the buyer buys the property. Tell the buyers why you are moving; it makes a buyer feel better if it is to upgrade, downgrade if kids are moving out, etc., instead of leaving it to the buyer’s imagination (because of the high electric bills or bad neighbors).

    I hope this helps sellers!

  5. gravatar
    Rohaizad
    August 29, 2009, 21:32

    I had friends who owned a house and renovates it, then facing loss since buyer didn’t like the renovation.They don’t want to pay more for the renovations.

  6. gravatar
    Jules @ Lovely Las Vegas
    August 30, 2009, 11:53

    Great article… my family would like to upgrade soon (with all the great deals out there), so this is will be a helpful reference for us as we prepare to sell in the future. Thanks!

  7. gravatar
    Greg
    August 30, 2009, 16:28

    We sold a house in the inland empire of California (ground zero for the housing collapse) just as the market was beginning to fall in late 06.

    My wife thought I was crazy but I went down to the local Costco and purchased a new 40″ plasma TV and put a big sign on it offering it to the buyer who presents a contract by midnight on Sunday of the weekend we had an open house.

    The couple that bought remembered it because of the TV they didn’t need. We gave them $2000 in closing instead and took the TV back to Costco!

  8. gravatar
    JLW
    October 20, 2009, 1:30

    Great post. I definitely agree with point #9. I remember one house we looked at while the owner was there – it felt very uncomfortable looking into their closets, etc. while they followed us around. We just wanted to get out of there.

  9. gravatar
    santhy
    November 23, 2009, 8:21

    thanks for the great information!

Please share your comment:


Please do not use the name of your site or keywords.


Email will not be published.

Comment Rules: Constructive criticism is welcomed. Please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name or URL, as the latter comes off like spam and I'll most likely delete your comment. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! Here's our comment policy and guidelines.

7 blogs that link to this article:

If your trackback does not show in 24 hours, please resend to this trackback URI.

  1. Roundup and Link Love: Welcome to Mandi Edition! | The Wisdom Journal
  2. Weekend Reading – Market Just Won’t Stop Edition | Darwin's Finance
  3. Interesting Reads 29 August 2009
  4. Saturday Staples: Personal Finance Reading : Yielding Wealth - Personal Finance Tips – Money Management Advice
  5. Sex, Lies, Scams, Unemployment, Real Estate, Lawsuits, and Money Roundup
  6. Money Hacks Carnival #80 — Automatic Finances
  7. Roundup – Nature Walk Edition | Cash Money Life
Refinance Rates
Purchase Rates
Refinance Rates,
   Product:                      Today        Last Week
Compare rates in your area:
Mortgage Rates
Refinance Rates
Purchase Rates
Purchase Rates,
   Product:                      Today        Last Week
Compare rates in your area:
Mortgage Rates

Your Credit Score

Featured Reviews

Featured Articles

Recent Articles

Affiliate Relationships

As required by FTC regulations, please note that we have a financial relationship with many of the companies mentioned on this site. We occasionally review products or services that we have been given access to for free. However, we do not accept compensation in any form in exchange for positive reviews and the reviews found on this site represent the opinions of the author.
 

Important Notice:

The information found on Moolanomy is provided and intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or other advice of any kind. The information contained on this site is aimed at a general audience, and does not attempt to offer specific advice to your specific circumstances. If you are looking for professional advice, you should consult with an independent financial adviser.

This site contains information about third party products and services, such as credit card offers, online banking, discount brokers, and credit score services. While we endeavor to ensure that the information presented on this site is accurate at the time of publication, any offers and rates shown on Moolanomy can and do change without notice. Visit the official site of the offer for up-to-date information.

For additional information, please review our Terms and Conditions.

Archives By Year

2007, 2008, and 2009

Additional Resources

  • CheapLoans.co.uk - A simple way to find cheap loans. For a hassle free quotation, apply now!
  • Mortgage Refinance - FHA lender offers fixed rate mortgage refinance loans for consolidating adjustable rate debt and loans, getting cash back and financing a new home remodel.