Prepare Your Home to Sell
Once you have worked with your Realtor to plan the sale of your home, you need to roll up your sleeves and prepare your home for a marketing blitz and viewing.
Preparing your home takes objectivity. Look at your home through the eyes of the buyer and ask yourself what you would expect. Even better, ask your agent to take you to competing open houses in your area, so you can see the condition of homes you’re trying to beat. Remember that most buyers are viewing at least a dozen homes before they make an offer. Yours needs to stack up against the competition.
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Declutter your home
When you reduce the amount of ‘stuff’ in your home, it help highlight its prime features and help it look more spacious. It’s essential to do this in every room of the home and also the storage spaces. Storage space is a significant selling point for buyers these days, and the emptier your closets are, the bigger your storage spaces will look.
Pack all non-essential items that you can live without until you move into your new home. This will kick-start the packing process and it will help when you paint, clean, and staging the home. Donate or discard items that you don’t want, need or use.
Decluttering now will not just help you get the best value for your home, but it will also reduce the amount of stuff you have to move when it’s time to go - making the moving process far more straightforward and cheaper.
Kitchen
Remove magnets, photos and drawings from the refrigerator
Remove decorative items from shelves and the tops of cabinets
Remove everything from the countertops
Put away rugs or mats
Remove table cloth and placemats from the kitchen table.
Living Room / Family Room
Remove excess furniture and arrange remaining pieces to enhance the flow of traffic
Remove worn or dated furniture, or update it with slipcovers in neutral tones
Artwork should be sparse and high quality
Remove any collectibles
Remove personal photos and other personal items
Clear most items off the fireplace mantel
Empty you magazine rack of all but one or two magazines
Dining Area
Remove extra leaves from the table to make the room appear larger
Leave no more than four chairs around the table
If you have a rug under the table, consider putting it storage
Remove personal photos and other personal items
Remove table cloth and placemats from the kitchen table
Bedrooms
Remove excess furniture and large items like as heavy dressers
Put exercise equipment in storage pet beds
Hide medical equipment in a closet or dresser
Remove personal photos and other personal items
Remove half the items in every closet and ensure that remains looks neat and organized
Bathroom
Hide all personal hygiene items
Put the garbage bin in storage
Remove toilet tank and toilet lid covers (if applicable)
Remove rugs
Replace the current shower curtain with a new translucent one
Clear all countertops, ledges around the tub and the sink(s)
Front entrance
Put infrequently used shoes, umbrellas, and coats in storage
Make Minor Repairs
If your pre-inspection flags an issue that could make a sale fall apart, you should fix it now. As well, some cosmetic repairs can significantly lift the value of your home. If you have enough repairs, it may be worth hiring a general labourer, ‘handyman’ or ‘handywoman’ who has the appropriate tools, will do a better job than you can and will finish all of your repairs in an afternoon or two.
Grouting
In your kitchen and bathrooms, grout is a common material used to keep the spaces between each tile looking uniform. This material can become damaged and discoloured over time.
While grout and caulk may seem similar, or even interchangeable, to someone who isn't familiar with the products, they are entirely different, with each having distinct properties and uses. Most grout is a mixture of cement, water, and sand.
With the right tools, you can easily repair damaged grout and make your floors, backsplash, and feature walls look fantastic again.
Caulk
Caulk is a thick flexible and waterproof substance made of silicone, acrylic, or latex. It is typically used around the edges sinks, bathtubs. It is also used where tile meets a countertop, sink or tub. Caulk can also be applied around drains, pipes, and windows to prevent leaks and provide weatherproofing.
Caulking can become discoloured over time, and it is trickier to repair yourself because if you do a sloppy job, it can look worse than the caulk you’re replacing.
Flooring
Scratches on hardwood floors can quickly ruin their beauty and appeal. Depending on the severity of the scratch, sanding and refinishing is not your only option to remove them. You may be able to use a wax stick or touch-up marker to fix your floors.
You may think cracked ceramic tiles are a lost cause, but you have a couple of options. You’ll have to evaluate whether the solution is better than the problem you’re solving.
The best easiest fix is to try to find an acrylic paint or permanent marker that matches the tile colour and use it to coat the chipped or cracked area. This works on small chips and crack.
If you can find a new tile that matches the size and colour of the damaged tile, you can remove and replace the damaged tile. This will take the better part of an afternoon because you have to chisel out the old tile and the adhesive that held it in place. Then you need to apply new adhesive, replace the tile and allow the adhesive to dry before you can re-grout the tile. Given a choice, most people prefer the paint or market option.
If your wall-to-wall carpet has small damaged spots like holes, tears, or burns, you can patch the hole using a small ‘plug’. You make a ‘plug’ by cutting out a piece carpet from inside a closet or from underneath a baseboard. This may sound extreme, but it’s a lot cheaper than replacing the entire carpet.
Outdoor Spaces
Make sure railings and floorboards feel solid and secure. Confirm that any fencing stands straight.
Fix Hardware
A loose door handle or a missing lightbulb can leave a negative impression on a buyer. Here is a list of things to inspect:
Doors – Doorknobs and squeaky hinges
Cabinets – Hooks, knobs, and pulls
Light, power, and Heat – Light switch plates, socket plates, light bulbs, and heat register covers
Faucets – Sink and tub faucets, showerheads, and related hardware
Toilets – Seats and flushing mechanism
Windows – Handles, locks, sliders, and screens.
Exterior – Numbers, knockers, lights, other features.
Touch up any scuff marks
If there are areas that are not paintable, like appliances, doorknobs, or other hardware, we recommend cleaning spots with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Magic Erasers are surprisingly effective.
For chipped paint on furniture or appliances, you can match the paint colour and make small touch-ups.
Be frugal
With a home that is fixed up and move-in ready, you will probably see more interest, and may even see multiple offers.
Spend as little as possible on repairs to ensure that you recover your costs when you sell the home.
Paint the Interior and Exterior
If your home is looking a little bit too ‘well-loved’, you can give it a makeover with a single fresh coat of paint. Fresh paint makes your home look newer, cleaner, and more spacious.
If you have a few weekends to spare, you can paint the interior of the home yourself, but bathrooms can be tricky, especially around sinks and toilets. If you are tight for time, we recommend using a professional painter.
A professional has all the necessary equipment (e.g., drop sheets, putty knives, oil and acrylic brushes) to do a proper job. If you decide to do it yourself, you will have to buy and store a large number of painting supplies that you may not need again for years.
Professionals are more important for painting exteriors because exterior work usually requires more specialized equipment. They will need to power-wash the exterior walls before they get started. As well, painting high exterior eaves requires special ladders and safety equipment. Professionals spot these issues during a consultation, but a homeowner may not discover them out until it is too late.
Expect a higher per-square-foot charge from a well-regarded painting contractor, but still compare a few estimates. Ask to see a breakdown of costs in your estimate. A price that is too low can be as much of a red-flag as an estimate that is too high. Make sure they specify the paint brand, type and finish.
Ask what quality of paint they are planning to use. Some paints are guaranteed to look good with one coat of paint while cheaper paints require a second coat. You can lose the money you save with cheap paint paying the labour to apply the second coat.
A good painting company knows its reputation relies on quality results, so they use products that will provide them with reliable results. As well, because they buy so much paint, they get professional discounts from suppliers.
There is some controversy regarding wall colour. Some interior designers swear that white walls are the worst, but we recommend them, and here’s why:
White reflects the natural light, helps to brighten rooms, and makes them appear larger.
White walls look fantastic in photos, and you’ll want your home to photograph well for the listing and marketing materials. The Wall Street Journal calls white walls “Instagram gold,” because they not only look terrific in photographs.
With white paint, it’s easy to make touch-ups if a wall gets scratched after the painters leave. Eggshell is easier to clean than a matt finish.
Ideally, paint the entire interior in the same colour. Choosing white will make life simpler but still requires some choices. What white will you choose? Here’s a blog that shares the pros and cons of 35 different white paints.
Tidy-up Outdoor Areas
Remove the oversized BBQ and the makeshift bicycle storage and imagine daisies overflowing from the window sills and geraniums on the little balcony.
If you have a full-sized yard, consider hiring a professional.
Perform a Deep Clean
You can either hire a professional cleaning company or get down and dirty yourselves.
It’s best to leave the clean-up until just before staging. That way the clutter has already been removed, refurbishments have been made, and all unnecessary furniture has been removed before you clean.
Make sure all carpets are steam cleaned. Again, you may want to consider a professional carpet cleaning company. This can be fairly expensive but you won’t believe how fresh the carpets look and feel afterwards.
Once your home is sparkling clean, you need stay diligent and keep your home clean until it sells.
You may even want to schedule a regular weekly cleaner until the home has sold because a professional cleaner will often see issues that you do not.
Stage Your Home
According to the Real Estate Staging Association, staged homes sell 73 percent faster than their un-staged counterparts.
After you’ve decluttered, made minor repairs, and performed a large-scale cleaning, you need to stage your home to highlight its best features.
Staging is preparing a home to appeal to your target buyer to help ensure you receive offers at a higher price and shorten your time on the market. If you decide to stage your own home, ask your Realtor for advice on how to stage it.
You can also hire a professional home stager. When considering a professional stager, compare the cost of the stager to the expected lift in the possible purchase price. If professional staging could raise the perceived value of your home by $25,000 then paying for professional services has an excellent payback.
When buyers picture themselves living in your home and become emotionally attached to it, they will be more concerned about competing offers. As a result, they will make to make aggressive offers to beat out any competing buyers.
Some basics of staging:
Remove personal photographs from walls and tabletops.
Remove oversized and excess furniture (If you have 6 dining room chairs, store two and leave four).
Store area rugs.
In the master bedroom, replace king-sized beds with queen or double beds. Other bedrooms only have single beds.
Let the sunlight in by opening blinds and curtains.
Consider replacing dated light fixtures.
Greenery sells
Imagine a homebuyer arrives at your home, and it’s their third walkthrough that Saturday afternoon. Perhaps they’re missing a friend’s barbeque to look at your home. How can you calm their anxiety and put them at ease? Some well-chosen plants may be your secret weapon.
According to research by Texas A&M, being around plants helps people concentrate better and improves memory and recall. Plants also significantly improve people’s mood and reduce stress.
If you don’t already have plants, you’ll want to pick hard-to-kill varietals. We recommend spider plants, peace lilies, and snake plant (also known as Mother-in-law's Tongue).
Even though they are hard to kill, you will still need to place them in a location with the right amount of light, and you’ll need to water them weekly.
Lighting
Well-placed lighting on both interior and exterior can make a home more appealing without doing any real home improvement projects. Accent lights on a patio or balcony can make the space look very charming.
Appliances
You don’t need to sell your beautiful appliances with the home. If you expect to renovate the kitchen in the home you’re moving to, then you can buy new appliances now and use them to spruce up the home you’re selling. Make sure you discuss this strategy with your real estate agent. If you go down this path, you can hold onto your old appliances and sell those with the home even though they aren’t ‘on display.’
Take Pictures of Your Home
First impressions are everything, especially in home buying. 98% of Older Millennials search on online websites, and 73% of buyers look at homes on their mobile/tablet. A 2013 Redfin study found that homes professionally photographed sold more quickly and at higher prices than homes shot with amateur photos.
It’s impressive how professional photography can turn a beautiful home into a showhome. Here are some examples of the difference between ‘good’ ameteur photos and ‘excellent’ professional photos.
Consult A Lawyer
You’ll need a specialized real estate lawyer.
Title Search
The title search shows whether there are any unexpected pre-existing liens or other claims to the property. You may think this is unlikely but here are some relatively common situations:
An old mortgage was paid off but the bank never registered a discharge at the land title office.
A tradesperson who has done work on your home can apply a builder's lien. A builder’s lien is typically used if a tradesperson is having difficulty getting paid. When they file a builder’s lien they are registering a legal interest against the property for money owed for the work that was done. If you or a previous owner has had a dispute with a tradesperson there could be a lien on your property.
Fraudsters can steal your identity and put a mortgage on your home without your knowledge.
Mortgage Fraud: Identity theft alert: How mortgage fraudsters left this Canadian with a bank lien on her $1M+plus property
Ask your lawyer to run a title search before you list your home so you can make sure there’s nothing unexpected. If there is something untoward, then you can fix it early rather than rushing to fix it days before the final purchase date
Review the Purchase and Sale Agreement
Usually, sellers only consult a lawyer after they have accepted an offer, and the completion date is approaching. A real estate lawyer does much more than registering the sale on the completion date.
A real estate lawyer can review the purchase contract before you sign it. Usually, there’s nothing in the agreement you need to worry about, but most people would need a lawyer to review a contract before they can know that it’s a safe contract to sign.
Although real estate agents are very familiar with the standard purchase agreement, they are not necessarily experts on the legal implications of adding or omitting clauses and conditions that these agreements may contain.
We recommend that sellers add a condition to the purchase and sale agreement that the purchase is dependent on a satisfactory legal review of the contract by a lawyer. Every province has slightly different purchase and sales agreement forms, so ask your lawyer how best to write this clause for your province.
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