Home Selling Tips (May 17/07)

Detach yourself emotionally from the property you are selling. Whether it is a 2 year old home, a 25-year residence or a multi-generation family estate.

When you decide to sell your property it is important that you cut your emotional ties to the home, it will be someone else’s pride and joy soon anyway. For many it is hard to leave a home, a place where you ate, slept, and lived for years. The sooner you disconnect from the home, which is just a material object, the sooner you can move on with selling and buying a new one. Change the things in the home that make it uniquely yours. You may like your personal touch, but others may not. Your goal is to have your home appeal to the widest number of prospective buyers as quickly as possible. Early offers are usually the best offers.

Mass appeal is when buyers immediately see themselves living in your house. Help prospective buyers do this by removing all traces of yourself. Clean all magnets, pictures and notes off the refrigerator and put away all your personal photos. Storing some of your furniture and knick-knacks while your home is on the market will make your house look larger. Painting the interior of the house with modern neutral colours can help buyers visualize themselves in your home. By making your home neutral people can imagine what they would do with paint schemes, furniture layout, and extra space if the home were theirs, and you what the home to be theirs.

Mass appeal is the goal of home staging most of the time. In some instances, niche markets, your home needs to be professionally staged to create the best opportunity for a sale. Contact a home staging expert in your area for more information.