Ready to Sell Your Atlanta Home?
Ready to sell your Atlanta home?
Selling your home is all about making a good first impression.If you are ready to sell your Atlanta home,pay attention to some good advice: “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.”
Little did you realize this sage advice from your parents was the key to selling your home quickly and getting top dollar in the process. As real estate professionals, we are often asked how to make a home sell quickly and easily.
Our parents’ advice sums it up perfectly: you must make sure your home makes a good and lasting first impression on potential home buyers. If you are ready to sell your Atlanta home it is all about creating some chemistry with the buyer.
A logical question by any potential home seller is “How can I make sure my home makes a good first impression?” Before you put your home on the market – way before you put your home on the market, you want to go to work sprucing up little details that homebuyers use to evaluate homes they are touring – whether touring in person or online through photographs.
You do NOT want to “test the waters” first and then try to make a good impression as a fall back strategy. Your parents were right when they said you only get one chance! We are going to talk about things that need to be done before the home is listed for sale in the MLS.
Home sellers will never have more buyer activity on the home listing than that experienced in the first three to four weeks after putting a home on the market. Statistically, a home will sell at its highest price during those first few weeks on the market. Why is that so? The reason is simple: there are buyers out there who have seen everything else on the market and are just waiting for something new to come along. And, it can get competitive.
Potential buyers want to be the first to see a new home listing before someone else beats them to it, just in case it’s “the one.” These buyers leap at every new house listing hoping to finally find the right home for their family. Real estate agents also watch closely for new listings, scheduling appointments as fast as possible for buyers who have yet to find their next home. To make sure your home looks good for all this activity, you will want to make sure your home is in top shape before you list it.
How do you get a home ready for the market? Put your home under the microscope and look at it critically, just like a home buyer touring it for the first time. When you’re getting your home ready for show, you will need to look past the floor plan to see what needs to be done. All human senses are working on overdrive when a prospective buyer walks into a home. Therefore, your home must not only look good to a potential buyer, it must appeal to other senses like smelling and feeling good as well. When potential buyers do find a house with a knockout punch to their senses, they are usually willing to buy quickly and for the highest price possible, often with complication-free transactions.
We are in a beauty contest right now for home listings and buyers strongly prefer homes in good to excellent condition. Buyers have to use almost all their cash reserves for a down payments and closing costs. There is usually very little cash left over for immediate home improvements. Potential home buyers are looking at your outdated shag carpet, broken gutter or 1960s wallpaper with the realization that they will have to live with it for a long time before their family budget will allow for improvements.
BUYERS are comparison shopping so don’t forget you’re in competition with a lot of other houses on the market. When faced with a decision between two similarly-priced properties, buyers will almost always choose the property that is in the best condition. Only when two properties are in similar condition will the property that costs less hold the upper hand.
Why do some homes succeed at making a good first impression while other homes fail miserably? Well, many sellers are unable to look at their homes through the eyes of a potential buyer. Because we see defects in our homes day-in and day-out, we become immune to the effect these flaws have on the first-time visitor. So, when we prepare a house to sell, we must approach everything with the buyer in mind, staging the home for the best showing possible. It is actually the buyer who determines if you are ready to sell your Atlanta home.
Think about home builder model homes as a perfect example of how a property can be staged to emphasize a home’s positive attributes while downplaying the negative ones. Visitors to these homes are often impressed not only with the appearance of the home itself, but also with the furniture, artwork, and flower arrangements. Even the knick knacks on the shelves in a model home are chosen to help create a positive first impression. All this is done with the hopes that a buyer will want not only the house, but everything in it as well.
Luckily for the individual homeowner looking to sell their home, there are many things that can be done – without spending a lot of money – to give a house that “model home” look.
ARE YOU READY TO SELL YOUR ATLANTA HOME? Follow us in our next post as we outline some actions that will help you get the most bang for your buck, and help you to sell your home quickly and easily.
