Recently we discussed the seriously weighty decision to continue to live in your house while it is listed for sale. This choice is necessary for many for a number of reasons, with budget constraints foremost among them, but it’s rarely the most effective choice.
Selling your home quickly for a bigger profit is the name of this game. The playing of the game is made more complicated by the fact that today’s buyers are in a hurry. They are attracted to move-in-ready houses that are professionally staged. (A professionally staged home often sells in a matter of days, while one that hasn’t had professional styling may linger on the market for much longer.) Showing buyers a home where the owners are still in residence makes the ‘move-in-ready’ requisite more difficult. You owe it to yourself to do everything humanly possible to make the showings go as smoothly as possible. Having the place in good order will help.
We’ve talked with a number of our home stylist Sydney specialists whose work revolves around successful house showings. They offered a few hacks to make it easier to pull this monumental project off. We share those tips and tricks here in hopes that you can use them to manage what is a stressful situation.
Pare it down: Step number one in any sale is the weeding out of your belongings. If you plan to live in your house while it’s being sold it’s more important than ever to get rid of every last thing you don’t absolutely need and use every day. If you want to keep it, put it into storage for the short term.
Pack up the kitchen: Leave just the number of plates, bowls, glasses, cups and silverware your family requires to eat just one meal. Also prepare to store all pots and pans that you don’t use daily. Treat placemats, storage containers, and any other thing in your kitchen that is not absolutely essential the same way. Yes, you’ll have to wash dishes more often than most of us want, but it’s necessary to keep things uncluttered. Discuss this with the home stylist Sydney you’ve chosen so that you don’t remove those things that the designer finds useful in the staging of your house, like pretty cookbooks, plants, or interesting artsy items.
Use just one bathroom: Try to confine your family’s use of the facilities to one bathroom. That way you can clean and polish the others, close the door and leave them in perfect condition. By doing this you can have just one bathroom to clean when a buyer comes along. This also goes for rooms that are not in use every single day. Clean your spare room, and then leave it closed off so that you don’t have to worry about it when the phone rings with a request for an inspection.
Other advice: First of all, give each family member a set of bath towels to use and prepare to do laundry daily. Keep a set of spotless white towels and a lovely bar of spa-style soap ready to put out when the agent calls with a potential buyer. With all toothbrushes, cosmetics, blow dryers and curling irons in one place, it’s easy to scoop them all into a handsome basket and stash them in a deep closet or under the bed when necessary. Likewise, keep a good-looking basket or box in each room for daily used items so that if the selling agent calls, you can quickly remove the unbeautiful items to an unseen location.
Put your little waste baskets in storage: When you are working against the clock, emptying each waste basket in every room is time consuming. Instead, loop a plastic grocery bag around the inside doorknob of each room so family members can pop used tissues, wrappers, and other items inside. Then you can just grab them on your cleaning run and go.
Use a timer – Once your house is thoroughly cleaned you will find it easier to just do a quick once-over in each room. It can be done in as few as five minutes. When you enter the room, deal with the things that catch your eye first then, working from top to bottom and left to right, tidy everything that needs your attention. Set the timer on your watch or phone to keep you on track, then go on to the next room.
By streamlining your quick cleaning skills to accommodate all-hours calls from real estate agents and buyers, you can facilitate the overall goal of getting your home sold fast and at a higher price than you anticipated. Don’t be bashful about calling in a professional home stylist Sydney to help you do the best you can with your circumstances. These pros are full of helpful advice and can make this challenge much easier on you and your family.
