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Sell Your Home In No Time At All With These Pro Tips
Local real estate agents share tips for selling your home as quickly and painlessly as possible.
By Jenna deJong
Jul 2018
Photo courtesy Shutterstock
It’s a seller’s world, and we’re just living in it—for now. Houses in our region listed at $225,000 and under are in high demand and seem to disappear as soon as they pop up on the market. This is all good and well, but there are still a few tips and tricks sellers should consider before listing their home and accepting the first contract. Real estate agents Ava Snyder (Murney Associates, REALTORS; murney.com; 417-823-2300) and Dan Holt (The Dan Holt Team, Keller Williams; thedanholtteam.com; 417-447-2782) have the inside scoop, so grab your pens and paper and take note.
Create more space
Both Snyder and Holt say the key to making a good impression on potential buyers is opening up each space in your home. “Most buyers want a nice, big open floor plan, so if you have a maintained older home, sometimes the best option is to enlarge doorways or maybe even take out partial walls to open up the space,” Snyder says. “Buyers are more casual in their living styles, which means they don’t use a formal dining room, but they want a large eat-in kitchen that is wide open to the big great room.”
“If you're looking into a renovation, spend your first dollars in the areas where the people who pay the bills spend the most time.”— Dan Holt
Focus on the master bedroom, bath and kitchen
“A buyer typically perceives the cost of improvement to be much higher than what is actually is, so if the kitchen is really dated and has the harvest gold appliances and orange countertops, the buyer is going to think it will cost them a lot more money to upgrade it than it actually would,” Snyder says. In that case, if a seller is looking to narrow their budget to only a few rooms in the house, focus on the spaces the buyers will be spending the most time in. “If you’re looking into a renovation, spend your first dollars in the areas where the people who pay the bills spend the most time,” Holt says.
Photo courtesy Shutterstock
Clean up the main living areas
“When buyers come into a house, they buy with all their senses,” Holt says. “They make emotional connections with their senses so when they come in, if there is an offensive odor or it looks dirty, they are immediately less interested in the house.”
Declutter, declutter, declutter
When Holt is advising his clients, he says to get rid of as many unnecessary items as they can, both for the buyer’s benefit and their own. “Get rid of all that’s not needed,” Holt says. “I would rather see the stuff boxed up in the garage than in overstuffed closets, shelves and on top of countertops.” Snyder says she tells the same thing to her clients wanting to create a more spacious environment. “I tell my clients, ‘You’re moving anyway, so let’s go ahead and get packed up so we know what to take and what to leave,’” Snyder says. “To me, less is more.”
