5 Tips to Ensure Your Home’s Showing Is a Success

The purpose of showing your home is to hook a buyer. You want the buyers to come through your house and be impressed – so impressed in fact, that they’re ready to make an offer! You’ll have one chance to make a great first impression on the potential buyers, so make sure to follow these five helpful tips to really make it count!

 

  1. Focus on the outside. Curb appeal can make or break the odds of someone even bothering to get out of the car to come in. If they pull up and see a home with a lawn that needs edging and has a flower bed full of weeds, they are going to wonder what else hasn’t been cared for properly. You want the outside of your home to be spotless. Clean the siding, the windows, and the doors. Make it pop!

 

  1. Take yourself out of the house. That means that you want to take out all the personal stuff. Remove the family photos, take down concert posters, and put away holiday decorations. You want the home to look neutral so that the potential buyers can look at your house and picture it as themselves living there. Everything should be as neutral as possible in terms of personal items.

 

  1. Remove all the extra clutter you see at first glance. If you look around, it’ll amaze you at how much stuff you’ve accumulated over the years. Some of it might very well be important, but that doesn’t mean that your potential buyers should see it. When you have a lot of clutter, it shrinks the living space of the house. It makes it look and feel cramped and smaller. Many homeowners get something called house blindness. They’ve lived in the home for so long with the same clutter that they don’t even really see it anymore. But a stranger will always notice. So clean out your house and make the space feel as big as possible.

 

  1. If you have a pet, no one that walks through your house should be able to notice it exists. That means no cat litter box, no dog to jump on anyone, no food sitting around in a dish. Your home should not have any pet odors or stains. You don’t want to lose a possible deal just because they can smell your pet’s presence, or your pet makes a bad impression. I know how difficult this can be when we love our pets like we love our kids. It is an important discussion to have prior to listing.

 

  1. Stage your home! You can hire a professional or you can do it yourself. Stage your living areas in a way that shows off your home. You can rent furniture to make your home furnishings look good if you don’t use a stager. Someone who knows how to stage a house knows how to play up the best features of your home and knows what to bring in or get rid of to make the entire house appeal to a buyer.

 

First impressions are HUGE when showing your home to potential buyers. By following the simple tips above, you will be well on your way to making a great impression and, hopefully, receiving an offer (or multiple offers)!  And if you are at all anxious about this important step, just reach out and I can help guide you through this process!