Selling our house in a weekend

Last fall our neighbors put their house on the market. We were shocked when we saw what they were asking, but it got the momentum going for us. We knew we wanted to move before the girls started school and had been financially preparing for a few years. In October we spoke with a realtor and decided March was a good time to list. We learned a lot along the way, but I think these steps were crucial in getting our house to sell quick and over our asking price. 

1. Hire a realtor. The first step we took when we decided to sell was to contact a realtor. We got recommendations for family and friends and went with someone we knew would be a good fit for us. I know many people hate to pay the realtor fee, but I can't imagine doing everything our realtor did for us on my own. Worth every penny!

2. Purge!! We knew we would list in March, so in January and February we started putting everything we could live without in storage. I suggest not doing this all in one day. My husband and I both work full time, so we did most of this a little at a time and over a few weekends. Side note- after having moved into our second home, I'm wishing I would have gotten rid of a lot more than I did. I'm still purging things I should have months ago!

 This is one load of things we put in storage before listing. 

3. Depersonalize. This should be a no brainer, but I've seen so many homes filled with things that appealed to the current owner only. It's so hard to visualize yourself in someone else's home. I put most of our family photos away except a few quirky ones that I felt added character to the room. 

4. Landscape. By that I mean, water the grass, mow the yard, weed the yard. You don't have to spend much, actually you'll spend more in elbow grease than in money! We were listing in the spring so we planted petunias along the front flower bed for a pop of color. Two flower pots with coordinating flowers on each side of the front door and voilà!

5. Clean clean clean. This is another extremely affordable task that has huge payoff. I waited until a few days before we had pictures taken to go Martha crazy. We cleaned everything. From top to bottom you name it, I scrubbed it. My husband even pressure washed our patio and patio furniture. We did pay professionals to shampoo the carpets, but everything else we did ourselves. 

6. Stage. This was my absolute favorite part of selling our home (aside from signing on the dotted line that is!) even though we'd been in our house for 6 years, getting it buyer ready was fun! I took a lot of the girl's toys over to my in-laws, I was surprised at how well they adjusted to having less to play with. I wanted our home to look like children lived there, but not lol! This step was also something that didn't cost anything. I used things I already had, moving them around from place to place. We have a neutral gray home so almost all of my pieces worked anywhere. 

7. Repairs. People don't want to walk into a house and see things that they would have to start working on from the get go. We had a few minor things to repair and did touch up painting before we listed. 

8. Professional pictures. Have you been looking at houses online and wonder why some pictures look like they were taken on a phone and others look amazing? That's because the amazing ones were taken by a professional. They are trained to open blinds just right, dim the lights just so, and shoot from the best angle. This was a courtesy done by our realtor (tip #1- get realtor!) The pictures made all the difference in the world. When we proofed them, I couldn't believe it was our own home. 

9. Timing. Timing, as usual, is everything. We waited to list in March since spring is such a strong buying season. What our realtor also did was put us on the market on a Thursday with the hopes of the weekend being busy. We actually had an offer on Thursday but decided to wait through the weekend with hopes of creating multiple offers. 

10. Price right. This is another reason to use a realtor. She scoured through comps and came up with a price that she thought would peak interest. We didn't want to price too low, but we didn't want to price too high. Again, we were hoping for multiple offers. 

After all of the hard work on our end and the guidance from our realtor, we had 6 offers to choose from on Saturday- all well over our asking price!!

If you are getting ready to sell I hope these tips give you a starting point! Good luck and get to cleaning ;)

Professional pictures taken by shoot2sell