How to Sell Your Home

Getting our house here in Thornton, Colorado ready to sell has been horrible, time-consuming, money-intensive, and just plain hard work. I threw my back out many times, sweated buckets, lost feeling in my left leg, and much more.

It's not that we had major repairs or anything, but we needed to pack up stuff, change our some decorations, store some thing tht we didn't want to have "disappear", and a big intensive cleaning.

So... how to sell your home:

Um... Don't sell!

No, really, we're buying only ONE more house. This time, we won't settle. We have made our list of what we want in a home that will be the final home we'll ever live in (well, at least for Hubby and I). No more compromises. And if we don't find our perfect home for what we can afford, we'll move into an apartment for 6 months while we find the perfect home.

Alright, here's a short list of what I've learned:

1. Do all repairs necessary, except those that aren't cost effective. For instance, we need to replace most of our fence but can't afford to. We priced our home a little more than what we want so we can "give" in to that for fence repair.


2. Is your house cluttered? Have lots of stuff? Lots of furniture? Personal pictures on the walls? Sorry, but you need to store most of it (we use http://www.smartboxusa.com/ instead of PODs because smartbox is cheaper!). Keep out only the bare minimum furniture/furnishings.


3. Take almost all decorations off the walls. Fill in nail holes. Paint so that the filler doesn't show.


4. Make the entire house "vanilla". Don't let anything stand out. You want people to see the house, not the decorations. So paint "eggshell-white" or beige over that bright red wall!


5. Keep watering, trimming and mowing the lawn/landscape. Brown grass is a big turn-off; your potential buyers might just keep driving, not even stopping in for a scheduled appointment.


6. Keep your kitchen clean. That may mean no cooking. Good idea anyway, because you don't want a vegetarian walking into your house smelling pot roast, or, god forbid, fish.


7. Empty ALL of your trash cans daily.


8. Vacuum regularly.


9. Collect the business cards left by Agents during showings.


10. Deoderize sinks by sprinkling a little baking soda down the sink and rinsing. Daily.


11. Shower at night. Hang the towels to dry. In the morning, when re-staging the house, fold the towels and put them away. Don't use the towels you've staged in your bathroom for "decoration".


12. Lend your pets to someone for the duration of your house being shown to sell. You DON't want the pet hair and smell and food and excrement to turn off a potential buyer. Plus, you might get an allergic person looking at your house.


13. If you have kids, like we do, you'll have to bite the bullet, and pack away most of their stuff. My son's room has only his bed and his desk. He has 4 tubs of toys in his closet, which can be put away at a moment's notice. His schoolwork is on a shelf in the family room. His clothes are immediately put away after laundry-time. Depending on the age of your kids, you have to talk about this, and why it's important to keep EVERYTHING picked up.


14. Have a house with no a/c? Get fans and portable air conditioners, and make sure they are turned on at least 1 hour before a scheduled showing. We keep the fans on all day.

Our house has been on the market for 4.5 days and already we've had 5 showings. No offers yet but our real estate agent is optimistic.

I'm sure I missed something. Comments?