Selling A Home: Are You Ready?
The overstuffed cabinets, leaky faucets, and cramped kids have you longing for a different home, but those things don’t really mean you are ready to sell. As a buyer, there isn’t much that preparation before entering the real estate market besides getting your finances in order. When you sell, it’s a whole other can of worms.
Take the Johnsons, empty nesters with two grown children who just bought their dream home. They are fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy without selling and even got a rentback from the current owners, but they underestimated the time it would take to get their house market ready. They planned on redoing the bathrooms, painting, and adding new carpets before the holidays started and their kids came home. Unfortunately, they started too many projects at once and were far from done when their adult children and families walked in the door.
This brings us to point 1:
- preparing to sell takes time.
Some of you might live clutterfree lives and for that I applaud you, but for the vast majority of people, clutter seems like an unavoidable part of life. Before you sell it is essential to cut down on the clutter, which means making a big mess and emptying drawers, clearing off counters, and getting rid of the stuff that is weighing down your life and your home. This is especially hard if some of the clutter has any kind of emotional meaning attached to it, like your grandmothers china doll collection or dining room table. Obviously keeping things that are sentimental is important, you don’t have to get rid of EVERYTHING, but sorting through to figure out what is sentimental and what is junk takes time and is exhausting. Putting yourself on an unrealistic timeline is an easy way to burn out and just haul it to the next home, or better yet leave it for you kids to deal with down the line.
2. Preparing to sell can be expensive.
All those repairs add up. In terms of both time and money, all the minor repairs that you have lived with for ages need to be fixed before you put the house on the market. That leaky faucet in the basement, water spots on the ceiling, and hole the drywall were fine for you to live with, but you wouldn’t want buyers to use that as a bargaining chip to get you to lower the price, especially when repairs are relatively inexpensive.
3. Keeping Your Home Neat For Showings Is Hard
If you can confidently say that you have the
- Time to prepare and declutter
- Money for repairs
- Patience for keeping a house show-ready
- Like the current market
Then you are ready to sell.
