Your home deserves to be shown in the best possible light. Fortunately, there are small steps you can take to facilitate this – tiny improvements which don’t require much time or money.

Here are five often-overlooked ways you can prepare your home for sale.

1. Repaint the Trim
You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars meticulously painting every room of your house.
Instead, for a tiny investment, brighten the trim. We’re referring to baseboards, crown molding, and trim around doorways and windows. Focus on the interior of your house first. If you have the time and resources, paint the exterior trim as well.

2. Hire a Professional House Cleaner
Unless you’re excellent at deep cleaning, you should seriously consider investing a few hundred dollars in hiring a professional house cleaner.
They can undertake a thorough top-to-bottom scrub down, which includes cleaning the grout, polishing the faucets, wiping down the ceiling fan blades, and dislodging every crumb from the gap between your stove and countertop.

3. Steam Clean the Carpets
This type of cleaning can lift the smallest stains and imperfections out of your carpets. Your carpets will look as new as possible, at a substantially cheaper price than the cost of a replacement.
You can rent a carpet cleaner from a hardware store if you want to take the DIY route. However, you may get better results by hiring a professional company to take care of this on your behalf.

4. Clear the Clutter
Clutter overwhelms a space, distracting from your home’s more beautiful elements. Many people won’t notice the high ceilings or large windows if their attention is refocused on a pile of old magazines, unopened mail, and random wires, cables, tools, board games and DVDs scattered about everywhere.
Clutter also makes a space feel smaller. Your walk-in closet might be amply sized, but if it’s overstuffed with old clothes, jackets, boxes, suitcases and bags, your prospective buyers will think the closet space is insufficient.

5. Stage the Home
Place a bouquet of fresh flowers on the coffee table. Position matching rolled towels next to the bathtub with a tiny decorative bar of soap placed on top. Arrange the bedspread so that the pillows create a ‘wow’ factor when buyers first enter the room.
Pay attention to fragrances within your home, as well. Light a scented candle (with a neutral aroma, like vanilla) in the bathroom or bedroom. Bake cookies just before a showing, so the smell lingers in the kitchen. Conversely, avoid cooking bacon just before a showing.

Open every window blind and curtain, to maximize the natural light that pours through. Keep the lights on in every room during open houses, so that every space appears bright and inviting.

Taking just a little bit of time to spruce up your home may result in better, faster and higher offers. You want potential buyers to fall in love at first sight. A cleaner, brighter look goes a long way toward helping you close the deal and walk away satisfied.

If you have questions about buying or selling a home contact Lisa G 704-264-4941 or Liz B 704-607-9918