Mark Adams Team

Preparing Your Home to Sell Without Going Overboard

Once we decided we were really going to move, it was time to do something Mark and I have helped countless homeowners do over the years.

Prepare our own house to sell.

It’s one thing to walk through someone else’s home and recommend what they should do before putting it on the market. It’s another thing entirely when it’s your house, your time and your money.

Suddenly, every project comes with a question:

Is this really worth doing before we sell?

We didn’t want to renovate our house for the next owners. We wanted to make sure the home looked well cared for, showed beautifully and allowed buyers to concentrate on the house rather than a list of little things that needed attention.

So that’s where we put our effort.

First, We Took Some of “Us” Out of the House

We started by depersonalizing.

We didn’t remove every family photo or make the house feel like nobody lived there. We left two or three personal photos but packed away most of the rest.

The goal wasn’t to make our home sterile.

It was to make it easier for buyers to walk through and imagine themselves living there.

That’s an important distinction.

A home can still feel warm and inviting without having your family’s story everywhere a buyer looks.

(I still can’t believe how much I packed before the pictures were taken and the showings began.)

Then We Tackled Closets

We packed away as much excess as we could from our closets.

This is one of those things we’ve recommended to sellers for years because buyers absolutely look inside closets (and the cabinets).

If every closet is packed from floor to ceiling, buyers don’t see how much storage the house has. They see a house that doesn’t have enough storage.

You’re moving anyway, so this is a great opportunity to start packing early.

Keep what you’ll need for the next couple of months and pack, donate or get rid of the rest.

The difference it makes is surprising.

We Love Our Pets, But Buyers Didn’t Need to See All Their Stuff

Anyone who knows us knows how much we love our pets.

But when it came time for pictures and showings, the pet stuff went away too.

We removed things like cat trees, pet beds, bowls, toys and other pet items that were normally part of our everyday life. Everything was put into the shed or taken with us to the Airbnb while we were showing the house.

It wasn’t about trying to hide the fact that pets lived in the house. It was about removing distractions and making the rooms look as clean, open and uncluttered as possible.

A cat tree might be perfectly normal in your family room when you’re living there, but in listing photos or during showings it can take up a surprising amount of visual space.

The same goes for dog beds, food bowls and baskets of toys.

We love our animals, but when we were preparing our home for pictures and showings, we wanted buyers looking at the house, not all the evidence of the furry family members who lived there. (Pete pictured below on our pet tote that we took to the Airbnb.)

We Cleaned, Cleaned and Cleaned Again

If there is one thing I would tell almost every seller to spend time on before listing a home, it’s cleaning.

And then cleaning some more.

We cleaned everything we could think of.

We also had all of the windows professionally cleaned. Clean windows can make an enormous difference in how bright a house feels, especially when buyers first walk through.

We replaced the air filters.

We freshly laundered the floor mats by the doors.

We looked at the house the way a buyer might and tried to notice the little things we’d stopped noticing because we lived there every day.

A clean house sends a message. It tells buyers the home has been cared for.

We Took Care of the Scuffs and Wear

Living in a house creates wear. That’s normal.

But once you’re preparing a home to sell, some of those little things suddenly become much more noticeable.

We touched up and painted cabinetry where there were scuffs or peeling paint, including cabinets.

We painted the ceiling in our living room, kitchen and dining room where it needed freshening.

These weren’t dramatic renovations.

They were relatively simple projects that made the house feel better maintained.

That’s an important difference when deciding what to do before selling.

You don’t necessarily need everything to be new. You want it to look cared for.

Below is our mudroom stairs. A good cleaning and a coat of lemon oil wiped on sparingly brought the dull stairs back to life. (Lemon oil is also great on stainless steel.)

We Paid Attention to the Outside Too

Buyers start forming an opinion about a house before they ever walk through the front door.

So, we spent quite a bit of time outside.

We pressure washed the house and the patio.

We resealed the front porch.

We put fresh flowers in the planters.

We reseeded areas of the lawn that needed attention.

We weeded the garden.

None of these things completely transformed the property, but together they made everything look cleaner, fresher and better maintained.

And then there were the driveways.

Sometimes a Bigger Expense Does Make Sense

We had two very large driveways, and both were showing their age.

Repaving them wasn’t an inexpensive little weekend project.

We had to decide whether spending that money right before selling the house made sense.

For us, it did.

The driveways were a prominent part of the property and something buyers would see immediately when they arrived. Leaving them in their existing condition could have distracted from everything else we’d done to prepare the house.

So we had them repaved.

That’s why I don’t necessarily agree with blanket advice that says sellers shouldn’t spend much money on a house they’re about to sell.

Sometimes you shouldn’t.

Sometimes you absolutely should.

The question is whether the expense addresses something buyers are likely to notice, worry about or mentally deduct from the value of the home.

A Few Small Touches Made a Difference

You Don’t Have to Make Your House Perfect

This might be the most important thing we were reminded of while preparing our own home.

You’re not trying to make your house perfect.

You’re trying to present it at its best.

Those are very different goals.

Before spending money on a project, ask yourself:

• Will buyers notice this?
• Does it make the home look poorly maintained?
• Will fixing it improve the buyer’s first impression?
• Is this something a buyer may worry will cost a lot of money later?
• Does it make the home feel cleaner, brighter or more spacious?
• Are we repairing something, or are we simply changing it to match our personal taste?
• Is the likely benefit worth the cost?

If you’re replacing perfectly good countertops because you think buyers might prefer another color, I’d probably think twice.

If your front porch is dirty, your windows haven’t been cleaned in years and buyers can barely get their coats into the hall closet because it’s packed full, that’s where I’d start.

The Goal is to Remove Distractions

Looking back, that’s really what most of our preparation accomplished.

We weren’t trying to convince someone that our house was brand new.

We wanted buyers to walk through and notice the things we loved about the home instead of being distracted by dirty windows, crowded closets, scuffed cabinets, pet items or exterior maintenance.

Clean it.

Declutter it.

Take care of the obvious wear.

Make the entrance inviting.

Remove the things that distract from the rooms.

Fix the things that send the wrong message.

And then stop.

Because at some point, you have to remember that you’re preparing the house for the market, not preparing it for another ten years of living there yourself.

Once we had done everything we felt was worthwhile, there was only one thing left to do.

Put our house on the market and see what buyers thought.

And that’s when things started getting very real.

Lisa & Mark Adams
Mark Adams & Associates
eXp Realty
office@markadamsteam.com
804-237-8585