Making your home “Market Ready”

Making an effort to clear out clutter to ensure that your home is as neat and tidy as possible before opening your door to potential home buyers is great advice when placing your home on the market.

A tidy home is “vital” when opening your home to potential buyers because most home buyers want to picture themselves someplace better and more beautiful than what they are currently living in now.  Buyers tend to want the perceived thought that if they move in the home it will still be organized, clean and attractive.  If a potential buyer walks into a cluttered home then that “feeling” will obviously not be felt.

Even if your home is in good structural and cosmetic condition yet still cluttered, potential home buyers will think that the home needs renovation which lowers the value of the home in the buyers mind.

I know, cleaning up isn’t always an easy task and parting with items that have an emotional value can be very difficult for a lot of people—me included. Most understand the need to de-clutter—it doesn’t cost much money yet does weigh on ones psyche.

Unfortunately, packing personal belongings into boxes that remain in the home isn’t much a solution since most potential home buyers will assume that there is not enough space within the home upon viewing boxes sitting in the corners of rooms.  Placing boxes into closets isn’t ideal, either, since buyers want to know that there is plenty of storage space contained within the home.

Getting prepared to move is a perfect time to get rid of un-needed items.  The advantage of ridding yourself of items that collect dust is that you are going to spend less money for someone to move you and you are also going to spend less money on storage.  Just don’t expect to de-clutter over a weekend—it takes most homeowners weeks, if not months, to complete the de-cluttering task. Remember, one step at a time!

Be ruthless . . . if you’re unsure about an item, GET RID OF IT!