WHY THIS GUIDE?

We wrote this simple guide for home sellers that are looking to sell there home guaranteed with these 5 simple strategies that anyone can use to make sure they can sell there home. 

 

WHO IS THIS GUIDE FOR?

This guide was written exclusively for home sellers based in Vancouver, BC or anywhere around the world because these simple strategies are so super simple. Everything that you need to know on selling your home guaranteed is in these 5 simple steps that any home seller can take.

 

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE?

You can treat 5 Simple Strategies To Sell Your Home Guaranteed as an road map to guide you to selling your home with simple and core tactics. If you have been trying to sell your home for awhile now with no results or call backs then guide has got some simple strategies for you.

 

STRATEGIES IN THIS GUIDE (CLICK TO JUMP TO THAT STRATEGY)

Strategy 1: Save Your Buyers from Hassle, You’ll Put More Money in Your Pocket
Strategy 2: Declutter Your Home And Make Sure It Looks Brand New (Or Close To It)
Strategy 3: If You Have A Lawn Make Sure It’s Tidy
Strategy 4: Allow Your Buyers To Visualize Them Living In It Already
Strategy 5: Invest $300 In This One Small Thing to Increase Your Home’s Value by Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars

 

Strategy 1: Save Your Buyers from Hassle, You’ll Put More Money in Your Pocket

The 2 Things That Repel 99% of Buyers

Eye Sore, Call Mr. Clean

When you enter a car dealership, there’s a reason why the cars are all spotless. Give the buyers a great experience when they walk around your home. Make sure you sweep and mop the floors, vacuum the carpets, clean marks on the walls, clean the kitchen and dust the place.

I’ve met some buyers who run their fingers across window ledges to see if the homeowners are clean or not.

Why is that important? Buyers judge the book by its cover. If the homeowners can’t even do basic cleaning, they wonder whether the homeowners have properly maintained the home.

Also, when buyers walk around your home, you don’t want them distracted by the sticky or wet stuff they stepped on or give them eye sores by leaving stains on walls and carpets.

But Gary, buyers aren’t going to be noticing those things…

Oh, let me tell you they do. Buyers are very critical of the homes they see and they’ll use it to say that the home hasn’t been well maintained, use it to justify their low offers and some are just disgusted and don’t even walk through the entire home.

If you want the buyers to focus on the beauty of your home, roll up your sleeves and clean your home.

A Showroom Condition Home is Always Spotless

Nasal Attack… What Is That Smell?

Just because you love the smell of your exotic dish last night doesn’t mean buyers like the same smell.

When you go into presale presentation centers or car dealerships, do you smell anything?
NO! That’s right, it should be odorless. No heavy perfume or cologne, no air freshener or scented deodorizer. Why?

You’re trying to help buyers focus on your home. What if they don’t like your air freshener smell? If you’ve followed Step #1, your home should be free from a lot of odors already.

You should be airing out your home on a regular basis. Open up the windows and turn on the
bathroom fans regularly.

Put some nice smelling flowers in your home so that it smells nice and fresh. If you have pets, BEWARE. You might not be able to smell the dog or cat odor, but others can. Some buyers have pet allergies and if they know the homeowner has pets, they stay away.

Get rid of signs that your dog or cat is the other homeowner such as dog bowls or kitty litter.
If your family typically eats strong smelling foods such as curry, garlic or kimchi, it’s best to use some air purifiers or odorless deodorizers. Maybe invite your neighbors or some of your friends over and see if they can smell certain odors.

Don’t forget to clean the kitchen daily and take out ALL the garbage in the home regularly to keep odors away.

So, they’re just odors, what’s the big deal?

Have you ever talked with someone but couldn’t really pay attention to what they were saying because their perfume or cologne was just too strong?

Exactly, so get the smell out and you’ll be one step closer to a Showroom Ready Home.

A Showroom Condition Home Doesn’t Smell

Strategy 2: Declutter Your Home And Make Sure It Looks Brand New (Or Close To It) 

Don’t Forget To Declutter. If you want your home to look like a show home, you have to remove all the unnecessary things.

Like in the story in the beginning, if you want clients to focus on how spacious your home is, you need them to be able to see the space.

If there are toys, clothes, gadgets, electronics, and other miscellaneous things everywhere, buyers can’t focus on the space.

They end up looking at what kind of toys those are, asking themselves why the clothes are everywhere and thinking about what kind of electronics those are instead of thinking about whether your home is right for them.

Put everything that you don’t absolutely need in storage. Buyers need to be able to walk through your home easily without squeezing into tight spaces or stepping over toys or clothes.

A crowded bedroom example would be one with a bed, desk, 2 end tables, a vanity, a couch, a TV on a TV stand, a stereo hi-fi system, a dresser and a rocking chair.

Try to be a minimalist when it comes to decluttering. Think about other show homes you’ve seen. Think about how spacious the rooms look. You’ll notice that there’s very limited furniture and stuff in the room. Maybe one picture frame, a book on the end table, and that’s it.

Organize and clean out your closets. Why? Buyers want to see whether you have enough closet space to fit their own clothes and if you have yours all jam packed with clothes, first, they think there’s probably not enough space since you seem like you don’t have enough space
there.

Second, they can’t see how spacious your closet is because of all your clothes.

A Showroom Condition Home Looks Decluttered

It’s Time to Decorate

Your Home is an Exhibition
You might like maximizing the space in your rooms with plenty of furniture, but similar to the last point, buyers want to be able to see space.

Arrange your rooms so that there are a minimal number of furniture pieces in each room. The less there is, the better.

Only put what’s necessary in the room and arrange it in a way that helps buyers to visualize where they should put their bed, where they can put their desk or hang their paintings, etc… Think about how staging companies arrange furniture?

Try to buy some small decorative pieces to place on kitchen counters, dining room tables, and end tables to showcase elegance. Use artificial fruit bowls, table cloth and utensil sets, books, magazines, some abstract sculptures or art paintings and some neutral picture frames.

The key is to help buyers see elegance and help them to visualize and imagine that if they bought the place, they could make it look as clean and elegant as how you have decorated it to be.

If you don’t have any ideas, try googling staging companies, show homes, lottery homes and
see those homes have decorated and staged the furniture.

Often people will hire staging companies to stage their homes and pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars per month. But when I walk into my clients homes, I notice that their furniture’s not bad and can be used to stage their own home.

They just need to declutter, clean the place up, and arrange their furniture in a clean and simple layout. Then, place abstract, neutral accessories and elegant ornaments to accentuate the room’s atmosphere. Most people can do it themselves with a little guidance. Ask your Real Estate Agent to help you.

A Showroom Condition Home Looks Elegantly Staged

Strategy 3: If You Have A Lawn Make Sure It’s Tidy

The Best Way: Make Your Home Look Like it’s been Well Maintained

Tidy Lawn, Tidy Owner

No Buyer wants to walk through a jungle before reaching your front door.

Therefore, cut your grass and do all the necessary landscaping (planting flowers, weeding the driveways, etc…) to give buyers the impression that you maintain your home.

An unmaintained front or back lawn brings buyers to the conclusion of, “if the homeowner didn’t even maintain the lawn, how well maintained could the house be?

What else didn’t the homeowner maintain? On the other hand, I’ve seen some extremely well manicured front and back lawns which usually reflects how clean the inside of the home shows as well.

And though the home may be an old timer, the inside and outside are very impressive and the home is very welcoming and livable.

First impressions matter when it comes to show homes. If the home is a mess before they even get to the door, they already have a biased view when going through the interior.

If you walk into a job interview dressed in a t-shirt and sweat pants, the interviewer has already judged you and it doesn’t really matter how impressive your interview goes, your first impression will have already turned the tides against you.

Lastly, doing basic maintenance of your lawn typically isn’t that expensive. Hire a landscaper and make the investment. It’ll definitely pay dividends.

A Showroom Home Has A Well Manicured Lawn

Give Your Home a Regular Check Up. Just like how you take your car in for a routine oil change or air filter change or tire rotation, etc, your home needs to have its regular check ups too.

What Regular Check Ups?

Well, how about that leaky faucet? That toilet that has that water noise, the door handle that doesn’t work, that dent in the wall, that crack in the tiles, that…

There are a number of things that are eye sores for buyers that detract them from seeing your home as a showroom home.

Fix any leaky faucets or any cracks in the tiles, dents in walls or clogged up gutters or anything that should be routinely maintained.

Did you replace the furnace filters? Is it time to buy a new furnace or hot water tank? Any routine maintenance that you do shows buyers that the home has been well maintained and it’s in move-in ready condition.

Buyers do not favor homes where they have to go in and do all the dirty work of basic maintenance like replace hot water tanks, furnaces, fix wall dents, leaky faucets, cracked tiles, etc…

You are trying to make your showroom ready. Don’t let cracks and dents and small appliance issues distract buyers. Help them to see an up-to-date, well maintained home by doing the routine maintenance.

Strategy 4: Allow Your Buyers To Visualize Them Living In It Already

Want Buyers to Picture Themselves Buying Your Home? Don’t Make This Mistake.

Focus on the Home, Not the Pictures. Buyers can’t picture themselves buying the home if they are bombarded by pictures of you and your family, or your trophies, awards and gold medals.

Help take buyers’ focus off of your accolades and pictures and onto your home.

Remove all these things from sight so buyers can effectively appreciate the home and visualize their own pictures and furniture in the space.

You can replace family pictures, trophies and medals with abstract pictures, works of art or decorative sculptures that bring character to a room.

Gary, what kind of sculptures and art?

Next time you go to a coffee shop, restaurant or a hotel, take a look at the walls and see the pictures, paintings and works of art on the walls. You’ll notice that they are there for the purpose of bringing life to the room.

Once again, the purpose of removing the family pictures is just so the buyers don’t get distracted by focusing on who the owners are instead of focusing on whether they can be the new owners.

Besides, when you are ready to sell your home, you need to detach yourself from the home.

How you like furniture to be arranged and how you like your family pictures to be displayed is no longer important.

You need to prepare the home to look like the ideal home for the buyers and that means removing the items that identify you from sight.

Strategy 5: Invest $300 In This One Small Thing to Increase Your Home’s Value by Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars

Let There Be Light. Have you ever noticed that all the new presentation centers for development presales are all brightly lit?

Bright places make your home look better. Open up the blinds to let more light in.
Change lighting if your lighting doesn’t really enhance your home.

Try to change some of your lighting to more modern pieces that really bring out the character of a room.

Avoid fluorescent lights used in schools or warehouses.

Pot lights are great for making your home have that contemporary look. Fancy, artistic and inexpensive light fixtures can be found everywhere and can make your home look so much more unique and bring out a special ambiance to any room.

Take note to replace the lighting for core rooms where you really want the buyers to focus on. These include the main living room, master bedroom, the recreation room, the kitchen and the bathrooms.

Lighting is key in these areas as they can often look very dull and boring based on traditional light fixtures.

If your home already has great light fixtures, you can always accentuate that with great blinds and curtains.

However, take note that sometimes the best way to bring in the most light is by removing the blinds and curtains. It depends on the room and the window, but definitely ask your Real Estate Agent for their opinion.

A Showroom Home is Bright and has Great Lighting

Add Life To Your Home With This Tip

Give It Some Color. Does your room look like this?

If so, it’s time for a huge makeover!

Nothing brightens up a house more than a new coat of paint. Choose your color wisely. Not everyone likes a yellow room or a fluorescent pink room.

Choose colors that are bright, yet subtle such as sky blue, ivory or olive green.

Also, take a look at what colors are your furniture. Black sofas probably don’t go well with in an olive green painted room.

Try to use some stark contrasts. Your best bet would be to go to your local hardware store and talk to the representative in the paint department.

If you have the money, you can always hire an interior designer but I would suggest some neutral colors because buyers can easily match their furniture to those colors.

Also, another reason you want to paint your rooms is to cover up the scratches and dirt on your walls. Your home might not be brand new, but a new coat of paint certain helps in making it “feel” brand new, ESPECIALLY if you do a good job of painting.

If you’re not good at painting, hire someone to do it. You don’t want uneven surfaces, globs of paint and marks and different shades because you didn’t know what you were doing.

Bonus Strategy 6: Buyers Love Renovated Homes

If You Can Save Buyers from This Hassle, You’ll Put More Money in Your Pocket

Buyers Like Renovated Homes

1 of the things buyers always mention when walking into older homes is the need to replace the appliances and they use this reason to discount the purchase price.

If your appliances are old and ready to be replaced, replace them ahead of time so that you can market your home better and help it stand out among the competition.

You may be spending a few thousand dollars to replace the old appliances, but buyers are going to be thinking it’ll cost over ten thousand dollars to replace the appliances and hence will deduct that amount from their offer price.

Also, if the flooring is old and worn out, consider replacing the flooring to alleviate another concern buyers may have. If you do the flooring yourself, it’ll cost maybe a few thousand dollars again, but many buyers aren’t aware of flooring costs and will think it costs over ten thousand dollars and will deduct that from the offer price too.

Other renovations I would highly recommend homeowners to do are the kitchen and bathrooms. These areas, when renovated actually ADD VALUE to your home whereas renovations to your bedroom typically don’t.

Having said that, make sure you make smart renovations to the kitchen and bathrooms. There are a lot of ways to make your kitchen and bathroom look luxurious without burning a hole in your wallet.

Small renovation touches like backsplash tiles and changing vanities and light fixtures to bathrooms are very inexpensive and add much value.

Other renovations touches that are pricier may be nice, but may not suit the look you are trying to for in the kitchen and bathroom, so be careful.

Again, talk to your interior designer, contractor or Real Estate Agent for some renovation advice.

Would you like to have everything above taken care of for you? Really sell your home fast and for maximum value? Guaranteed? If your answer is “Yes” then call one of Vancouver top home selling realtors, Gary Wong, to help you with selling your home with all the steps above and more. Call 778-862-9787 now or fill out this simple form.