3 tips to prepare your house for selling

While you don’t have to do a complete overhaul to get your house market-ready, you do need to make an effort. Your Texas REALTOR® can suggest some ways to make your home appealing to buyers, but here are three ways you can prep your house for selling.

Don’t ignore fixable problems Maybe you’re used to living with the dripping kitchen faucet, but a potential homebuyer may not be able to ignore it during a showing. Sure, it might be an easy fix for a new homebuyer, but it might be easy fix for you, too.

If there are repairs that you’ve been putting off, it’s time to consider which ones are worth making. You can also ask for some advice from your Texas REALTOR® about which home repairs should be on the top of your to-do list. Some may be too large to tackle at this stage in your sale, like a major renovation. Others, like a leaky faucet, can probably be fixed for less money and in a short amount of time.

Keep your clutter to a minimum If you are living in your house while you’re waiting for it to sell, it’s going to look like someone lives in it. Buyers expect occupied properties to look, well, occupied. But that doesn’t mean that they need to see your dirty laundry pile on the bathroom floor.

Although Texas REALTORS® encourage their buyer clients to look past those small things, many buyers have a hard time with it. If it’s not difficult for you to put a hamper in the bathroom to store your dirty towels, you might as well give it a try. If you’re having trouble deciding how much de-cluttering to do, ask your Texas REALTOR® for some guidance.

Make sure the price is right You made a lot of memories in your home, and maybe you even invested your time and money into improving it, but the fact is that the market is what dictates the sales price.

If you price your property based on sentimental value or the remodeling costs you hope to recoup, you’re probably not pricing it properly. When a property is priced too high, it doesn’t sell quickly. In fact, it might not sell at all. Your Texas REALTOR® will be able to help you come up with the right asking price. He’ll even take into account those updates you made, but he’ll do so with accurate market information.

Get more advice on preparing your home for sale, plus other tips for buying and selling real estate in Texas, at TexasRealEstate.com.

GDWCAR is the local REALTOR® trade association. Use a REALTOR® for your property transactions, for more information please go to our website at www.gdwcar.com