I don't generally do this, but I ran across a couple good ideas on Yahoo yesterday that made sense. I do think presentation of a home makes a great deal of difference. I have one family who has prepared their home like a model, checking out what makes a model so enticing and then copying it. Amazingly everyone who walks through says it "Shows like a model!" Mission accomplished - well, not yet, because it hasn't sold but it's still available for you to buy....!
Another family staged the home, complete with fake food on the table for Thanksgiving and a breakfast tray with croissants and tea things set invitingly in the master bedroom. That house did sell, and above the price I had thought privately we would get.
But this is what Yahoo says: "If you do only two things before showing your house, clean and clean some more."
Very, very true! I recently sold a home that had been supposedly cleaned but the new owners spotted grease on the baseboards and found left-over food in the drawers. The impression was "Ick!" and thank goodness they were willing to look beyond that. The agent agreed to having the home cleaned by the woman who works for us and RE/MAX. The new owners were then quite pleased.
I first realized the value of spotlessness and gleaming hardwoods when I sold a home years ago in Skaneateles. It was just a home - not new or old, but it fit to perfection the needs of my clients. We came back to it prior to closing, and with all the furniture out the owners had contracted a woman to give it one last clean for the new owners. I remember walking in and just being incredulous - what a gorgeous home, I thought. How could I have missed the beauty of it!
The current owner said it was just the cleaning. She said she felt every time the woman came that "God had visited her home."
That's the same woman who cleans our home now. She makes an incredible difference. For a time there every home she cleaned for me sold within a week.
She has a full-time job now and only works part time, or I would have her clean every home I list. She does a phenomenal job, but there are others who can do the same, as demonstrated by my "model" home that I discussed earlier.
The point to be taken from this that bears repeating: "Clean and clean some more!"
