The Selling Points: Why Your Home is NOT Selling

It is that time of year again, school is about to or already started and you are behind. Not with your latest assignment, but with selling your house. By this time, you are beyond frustrated, wondering what about your house is a trigger point for “no” from potential buyers. I am here to share 4 selling points to close on your home fast. Of course, in my budget-friendly style.

My number one selling point that I tell everyone, who is getting their house market-ready, is to spend money fixing up the master bedroom and common areas, such as the kitchen and den. You are already on a tight budget with moving expenses and buying things for your new place, don’t spend too much time and money fixing up secondary bedrooms or basements. Overhaul a magnificent kitchen instead.

You need to fix up the areas in the house that are going to appeal to your buyer, the potential owner(s) of the house. The kids can like the house all they want, but if the parents are not on board with the house they are likely going to hard pass. Same thing if they bring other family members or friends along for house hunting.

One piece of advice, when fixing things up around the house, is to make sure you do not display items that are attached to the home that you want to keep, during an open house. Remove that upgraded kitchen faucet you want to bring to the new home and display a baseline faucet instead. My tip for this is to keep all the baseline things in your home in a storage box if you plan on bringing the upgraded piece to the next house with you. An example of this is my mirror in my powder room. I loath the baseline mirror that came with the house, so I brought this mirror from Homegoods and I love it.

I plan on bringing it to my next house so before I put my house on the market, I will take it down and put the baseline mirror up. This will ensure there are no questions about whether or not my beloved mirror needs to be included with the sale of the house.

You want to avoid conflicts with your potential buyers and one of the conflicts you can avoid is the one you can control, which is taking down these precious items.

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We have all heard of the term dress to impress, it applies with the next point in my stash. That point is to dress up all rooms. Leave no empty rooms. There is nothing worse than touring a house with empty rooms. Truth is, we all need a window into an idea for that space and if you don’t create that window, you could potentially turn that buyer away.

An example of this is when you go apartment hunting. They always have what they call “the model” and its usually staged up to the nines to entice you to live there. The agent always shows you the model before you see anything else, even if the model does not fit the same type of floor plan you are looking for. The same principles go for you trying to put your house on the market. The contents in your window do not have to break the bank like renting items.

Here are some budget-friendly ideas. The first idea would be to borrow furniture and other staging pieces from family members that live nearby. Another idea, instead of renting pieces that charge you taxes and other surcharges is to stage with future items. You have always wanted those couches for your new place. Why not purchase them a little early and break them in at the old place for staging your perfect living room. Now I know you are going to say you want your new items for your new place, so I have one more idea. Purchase things from discount stores like TJ Maxx, Ross, Marshalls, and Ikea. When you do go for staging a bare room think of a cheap room you can stage. If you have a laptop and a printer beside your bed but one of your secondary bedrooms is empty. Stage an office. An office is by far one of the cheapest rooms you can stage. All you need is a desk, a bookshelf, and borrow one of the chairs from that awkward back corner of your kitchen table that will not be missed. I have linked a great price on a bookshelf and desk.

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I wanted to give you one more idea that is fairly cheap to stage. A bedroom is another room you can cheaply stage. Many potential buyers are looking for more than just the master dressed as a bedroom. Some ideas for your secondary bedroom are you can place an air mattress on top of boxes, cover the boxes with a sheet, like a bed skirt and dress up the air mattress as a bed. You can stack a couple of boxes on top of each other and place a sheet over it with a lamp or some pictures for a nightstand.

I have one more point for dressing up your master bedroom if you only have a mattress and a TV. I have a $15 hack for a headboard that goes right onto your wall. All you need are some pieces of wood, nails, wood filler, and stain. Leave a comment below and let me know you want to see the tutorial and I will link it to this blog. You can also get some nice side tables for $50 from TJ Maxx Homegoods. Pair these items with these floor to ceiling drapes from Target for $20 and you have the perfect selling silhouette for your master bedroom.

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I have two more selling points that can either kill a sale fast or cost you extra money on the back end if not done before putting your house on the market. One of the selling points is to clean your carpets. This cannot be said enough. If you have dirty mangled carpet from years of wear and tear from humans and/or pets you not only need to clean your carpets but replace the carpets in the rooms where it is most apparent. If you cleaned your carpets or replaced them right before you put the house on the market this is a fantastic selling point your real estate agent can add to the list of amenities that come with the home.

The potential buyer sees this as a relief from having to deal with buying new carpet or getting it cleaned. Also, it shows that you as the seller took great care of the house if you have already taken the liberty to clean the carpet. Cleaning the carpet does not have to break the bank by calling Stanley steamers. You can get a rug doctor and the cleaner from Walmart between $25 and $35 depending on your wants and needs.

The last selling point of the day goes along with the cleaning theme of carpets. You not only want to have clean floors, but you also want to have a clean total package. There is nothing worse than seeing scuff marks on the walls that you can add touch up paint to give the house a clean appearance and clean lines from top to bottom. Break out those paintbrushes and cans and get started.

One tip I did want to provide when painting your home is stick to light colors, white, or off white throughout the home. They make the space seem bigger and inviting. You want to avoid leaving your particular taste and bias up for display unless you know for a fact that it is in style. For example, shiplap. Shiplap has started to become more popular in homes over the last 7 years but you are limiting your home to people who only have the shiplap farmhouse fancy. What if your potential buyers have an eclectic or industrial taste? You just missed your sale if you would have just stuck to light-colored walls. The buyer sees this as a convenient opportunity to paint and make the space their own when they move in. If your buyer does not have shiplap taste, the convenience goes out the window when they have to think about gutting the shiplap and repairing the wall behind it.

One last thing that is an honorable mention when making sure you take the “you” out of the home is to take down all pictures of you and your family and any art. That includes statues and figures. Things that are baseline like a picture that says "kitchen" is fine to display but a picture of your children, as precious as they are, needs to come down. Remember you want your potential buyer to envision themselves in the space so you can make the sale. They cannot do this in confidence if you still have pictures of “yourself” in “their” future home. And you cannot move on from your old home if you are not willing to let it go and take yourself out of it.

These selling points can work both with moving in and out of a place. Maybe you don’t have money for furniture yet for a secondary bedroom but you want to dress it as such for when you have a house warming. You can stage your house. Maybe you are moving into a fixer-upper and you want to get started on overhauling right away but only have money to work on one project at a time. You can start with your bedroom or one of the common areas. Leave the secondary bedrooms and bathrooms last. Just remember, if you are in a penny-pinch to stage a room for your move in, an accent wall or paint goes a long way. I hope this article aids you in setting the stage to sell your home. Let me know in the comments below if you plan on applying any of these selling points and how well they worked for you.

I would love to hear your stories. Until next blog.

XOXO

-Ashley