Selling Your Home: 5 Simple Ways to De-Personalize Your Home
Depersonalizing a home is an easy, low cost way to prepare your your home for sale. And, it is absolutely necessary when getting the home market ready.
What is depersonalizing? It is the opposite of personalizing – which is to change or modify your home to show that it obviously originated from or belonged to you. When living in your home, you work hard to make it UNIQUE. When marketing your home, you need to work hard to have MASS APPEAL. You want to attract everyqualified buyer to see your home to find the ones who will step up and make an offer on your home. Buyers have many home choices and are in the driver seat. If they don’t like what they see on line, they won’t even come see the house. I have 15 years of helping sellers do all the things below.
So here’s 5 easy and cost-effective things you can do to create a home that will appeal to as many buyers as possible. (You may see your own home in the photos that accompany each point!)
1. REMOVE FAMILY PHOTOS – when I tell my clients this one, they are usually puzzled…wouldn’t a buyer want to see that a warm, loving family lives here? And my answer is two-part. First, when there are a lot of family photos, buyers start looking at the photos – do they know the people? (Isn’t that the guy we see at the beach in his Speedo? He’s married to her? Isn’t that the kid who our kids hate? ) Second sometimes the photos show too much…buyers say AHA! (THIS is why they are selling…no photos of Dad…divorce! A pack of kids…house must be too small for them, so it’s too small for us!) Either way, no one is looking at the house, they are looking at the photos! And…no one remembers why they are there.
2. PAINT –paint is one of the most inexpensive ways to broaden the appeal of a room. Some color choices or wallpaper can date a house. Others are sooo personal that a buyer finds them startling. When a buyer is startled, they see something they have to change. They see dollar signs and they start to think if the person who lives here would pick this color, maybe I don’t want to live here…again like family photos, they stop thinking about the house and instead start thinking about who currently lives here. (I love color – that’s a photo of my bright orange kitchen which my family and I adore. If I were to list my own house, that kitchen would be painted a broad-appeal, warm beige BEFORE I put the house on the market.)
3. DECLUTTER – Get some large plastic tubs for each of the main living areas of your house – one for the living room, one for the dining room etc. Label them by room. Go through and wrap up all the small items and treasures you have on open surfaces – Many people have little collections or doodads on tables etc. Removing them will make the rooms look more open and fresh. Also, those little treasures are likely to be knocked off a table or picked up by a small child. Again, you are moving so a little pre-packing makes sense. Again, these items speak to a buyer about who lives in the house and our focus is to always be on THE HOUSE.
4. THE KITCHEN – This is the MOST IMPORTANT room in the house. I work with my sellers to get EVERYTHING off the counters except for a coffeemaker. No exceptions. This usually means reorganizing the kitchen cabinets so that a place can be found for the toaster, canisters, blender and other things that are currently on the counter. Reorgainizing the cabinets is important as buyers will open your cabinets and look inside. Again, the large plastic containers work wonders. We pack up the little used items to make room for the countertop items that might need to be pulled out and used while the house is on the market. It is also the perfect time to throw out the old spices, give away the extra set of dishes, etc. You may not have a wow-factor, brand new kitchen, but organizing, decluttering and cleaning will bring out the best in a kitchen. Use the same approach with your bathrooms- clear of the vanities, the tub surround, the toiliet tank. Let the sufaces shine through!
5. YOUR PETS – having a pet is a wonderful thing…that’s my dog in the photo. But, having a pet is a personal choice…one that might not appeal to a buyer. Many buyers are afraid of creatures great and small. Some are allergic and will not consider living in a house where an animal currently lives. So, first you must make arrangements for your pets while the house is on the market. If you have an exotic pet that might frighten buyers, ask a friend who shares your love of exotic pets to pet sit for you while the house is on the market. Your home should never smell like pet…ask a friend to be honest with you about the smell in your house. Worse than pet smell is flowery sprays trying to cover pet smell. Litterboxes, pet dishes, and pet beds should never be visible while the house is being shown. Also, pets should be taken with you or put into secure crates out of the main living space of the house while the house is being shown. A barking dog tearing at his crate in one of the main living spaces is very distracting. Discuss a showing strategy with your agent to accomodate your pets.
The list takes the ability to see your home as a product and no longer a reflection of yourself. I have many a reluctant seller in the beginning, but many a happy seller when the offers come in because their house stood out from the listings that don’t take the time to do these tips. It doesn’t take a lot of time, money or effort. It just takes trust in your agent’s knowledge of what buyers look for and their instinct to do right by you. Once I start with my sellers, they find it hard to stop!
Depersonalizing your home is just one of many invaluable services I offer my seller clients. We share the same goal: to sell their home in the shortest time possible for the most amount of money!
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