The Safari Guide to Listing Your Home

This is the second installment in our weekly blog series to help you prepare your home for listing in today’s market – Assess Big Repairs!  If you follow this 8-week guide, you’ll be able to break up all those to-do’s into manageable steps that will leave you in the position to present your home in the best light!  Check out the first blog in the series here.

Assess Big Repairs

Every homeowner has a list of repairs that we’ve always intended on getting done.   If you’ve seen an episode of ‘Modern Family’ it’s the loose stair everyone is tripping over.  So, you get the idea!

Basically if you have something that’s ‘bugged’ you, it will probably be noticed by future buyers and the buyer’s inspector.  So, now is a great time to call contractors to schedule visits to your house, and secure and compare repair estimates. For example, are all of your windows in good repair?  Do your hardwood floors need some love? How about new interior paint? Is it time to ‘neutralize’ the hot pink and cheetah theme in the teenage bedroom?  Does the deck need to be stained?  In older homes the GFCI outlets seem to always be missing in kitchens and bathrooms (and this will always come up in inspections)!  Sometimes due to weather, exterior projects are just not feasible. But, knowing the cost to repair could prove helpful in budgeting and in negotiations with your buyers. Knowledge is power, so now is the time to get contractors scheduled and lined up! If you’re looking for contractor referrals, we’re here to help!

Property Walk-through

Also, at this time, our eagle eyed property walk-through will take place at your house.  Interestingly enough, items that you may find nagging sometimes will not hit the buyer’s concern list, and we’ll let you know!  Conversely, there may be items you feel are unimportant, but our perspective as listing and as buyer’s agents tell us how buyers generally react. So, in our visit we’ll help you prioritize tasks based on which home repair items are a total buyer turn off, and those that buyers seem to overlook.

Additionally, this could be a great time to hire an inspector to perform a pre-inspection on your house. We highly recommend you consult with us about the pros and cons of a seller pre-inspection. 

Give us a call, and let’s get started!