3 Tips for Selling Your Home This Spring

3 Home Sale Tips

A rise in rents is encouraging American’s in their 20’s and 30’s to look into buying a home instead of paying the high rents. Now is a good time to look into selling a home. Mid-March to mid-April is the best time to hang the sale sign nationally, with homes selling 15% faster and for 2% more than the average sale, according to Zillow. There is still a very tight inventory here in California, and new homes being constructed haven’t flooded the market yet. And mortgage interest rates are still low and affordable.

If you decide that now is the time to sell your home, we offer these three tips to make the process smoother.

Declutter and Spruce Up

Rent a storage unit and store in it all those boxes of college textbooks that are hanging out in the garage or an office. Stow away all of your photographs and memory books and yearbooks. Pack away all the extra sets of china that are hanging around. Maybe now is the time for a garage sale, or a large donation to your favorite charity. Get your home down to a very minimal amount of stuff. Then add in plants and flowers in the front to add a pop of color.

It’s important to depersonalize your home, and this may be difficult if you’re still living there. The people looking at your home need to be able to visualize themselves living there, not how you lived there.

Work With Your Real Estate Agent

You hired them for their expertise. Now help them to get the home sold to the best qualified prospect for the highest amount of money. Listen to them if they have suggestions about making some updates, or if they have opinions on the home sale price. Small projects that you may have been putting off could have huge returns on the sale price.

Keep the House Comfortable

If it’s cold out, you may be tempted to turn up the heat. Don’t. If people come in with their heavy coats or sweaters on, they won’t take off the jackets. Instead, they’ll leave quickly. And you want them to spend time in the house looking at how great it is.

Ensure that the house smells neutral or like baking cooking.

And keep lights on. You don’t want any dark corners. Make the home seem warm and inviting.

Don’t Make These Mistakes

These are some common mistakes home sellers make.

• Skipping the home inspection- Don’t let the buyer’s home inspection find something that you could have fixed first.
• Overpricing your home – “If you price it too high, it will just sit on the market, agents will stop showing it, and buyers will assume there’s something wrong with it,” says Jeanette Cook, a real estate agent in Burlingame Hills, Calif., a suburb of San Francisco. Your agent should show you comps of at least five homes in your area.
• Overpaying the commission- 63 percent of the real estate agents in our survey admitted that they negotiate their fees at least half of the time. And despite the widely held belief that 6 percent is the standard broker’s commission, almost half of the agents we surveyed typically charge just 4 percent or less.
• Hiring the first agent you meet- Talk to different people. You may still go with the first person, but you’ll have a stronger understanding of your options.
• Neglecting to do a Google search for your address – Make sure nothing negative comes up, such as an old lawsuit or public records that have inaccurate information about your home’s number of bedrooms. Also, ensure Google street view shows any upgrades you may have made.
• Putting your home on the market before it’s ready – Get it ready to put its best foot forward.