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A FSBO Guide to:HOME PREPARATIONHave you ever drooled over the gorgeous pictures in “Better Homes & Gardens” magazine?
Did these pictures wet your desire to have a similar room or home? Why? Because the rooms in the pictures were:
- clean - neat - organized - bright - inviting - cozy But, most of all they HAD “SIZZLE”.
is all about creating some “SIZZLE”. If you want to sell your home in a timely manner - and at your price - you need to create as much “SIZZLE” as possible. This means: - straighten up! - clean up! - fix-up!
Home preparation, or staging (a word now in vogue) is critical to a timely sale and extra profit.
The old adage “you only get one chance to make a good first impression” is very applicable to home selling. Don’t blow it!
Any good real estate agent will tell you to clean-up and fix-up your home. This is an aspect of your home sale that is equally important whether you are selling yourself or using a real estate agent. Unfortunately, real estate agents won’t offer you any detailed instructions on accomplishing your pre-sell home preparation. Neither will those other “For Sale by Owner” sites on the internet.
“For Sale By Owner. . . Plus” has detailed and organized, SPECIFIC step-by-step instructions especially for making your home “desirable” in a minimum amount of time.
Please read each of the click-off pages below. As you work your way through them you will begin to get a feel for how they fit together in an organized plan for creating your home's SIZZLE.
Let’s get started. 1) Clean-Up and Clean-out
The first home preparation task you need to accomplish is - cleanliness. Visitors interested in purchasing your home are not only going to look in every room, they also expect to see inside closets, cabinets, garages, basements, attics, etc. You don’t won’t to cringe and make apologies when you open the door to the storage room in your hallway. Clean-up can be a big job, but if you are organized and have a plan, it can be a lot easier.
Almost equally as important as clean up is to make the outside of your home as attractive as possible. Why? Because it is the first thing that your potential buyer is going to see. If you turn them off here, making a sell will be like pedaling uphill. It’s easier to devote a little effort to creating a neat, clean and pleasing impression. In the real estate industry this is know as: CURB APPEAL. What is your home’s CURB APPEAL?
How to Create a WOW! - CURB APPEAL.
3) Home Journal
Some tasks lend themselves to being done simultaneously. Keeping a eye out for significant papers while cleaning up is certainly one of them. Warranties, appliance and service manuals, operating instructions, etc, are all important papers that seem to find a way of being scattered throughout every room in your home. Looking out for them and having a plan for what to do with them is a smart idea.
Why you need a “Home Journal” and how to make one.
Next you will have to consider minor repairs. By far the easiest will be the ones that can be achieved with an oil can or a screw driver. Even replacing a light bulb can be part of home tune-up. The real task here will be to make a detailed room to room inspection. Make notes, and then decide which to do yourself and which require the expertise of a handy-man.
Your Home Preparation “Tune-Up Plan”
To repair, or not to repair, that is the question. With respect to home repairs the For Sale By Owner is faced with four options. Make the repairs yourself. Hire them out to a professional. Sell the home with a repair “allowance”, or sell the house “as is”. Deciding which way to go is easier when you understand the strengths and drawbacks of each option.
Tips for making FSBO Home Repair Decisions
6) Garage Sale
A “home selling” garage sale is a little different from other types of garage sales. It is a natural extension of your “Clean-up, Clean-out” project. Since many of the things involved with selling your home will cost money - advertising, brochures, appraisals, repairs, etc, - a garage sell can substantially offset some of those expenses. If you know that you are going this route, then a little pre-planning will make it a snap.
Planning and Implementing your Garage Sale
7) Security
Yes safety and security precautions are a part of your home preparation plans. Why? Before a "For Sale by Owner" can invite anyone into their home to view it, they must be aware of certain situations that could possibally spell disaster, and then they have to take pro-active steps to avoid and protectect themselves from these situations.
Your Home preparation is now complete. You are well on your way to putting the sign in the front yard.
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