After much searching, the following websites provide good traffic, free listings for your home, and rank quite well in the search engines. Best of all- they let you list your home online for FREE!
Take the time to write a good description of your home (proofread this several times!) and keep a copy on your computer. Then, when once your home is on the market, simply copy and paste the ad at the following websites. Don’t forget to upload a few well-taken photographs that showcase it’s best features. Remember when choosing photos, most home buyers are interested in kitchen, master bedroom/suite, bathrooms, and any “extra” special areas in your home.
We’ve made it. Our house on the market. Our first open house was last weekend and we had 13 groups tour the home. I baked cookies, and we staged the movie theater with fresh popcorn, chocolates, and old-fashioned peppermints.
We have another open house this Sunday from 11am to 3pm. The weather is chilly- but we are hopeful for a few more visitors.
I created a home marketing (aka Virtual Tour) video for our home and published it on YouTube.
In today’s market, buyers seek luxury kitchens, grand master suites and spa-styled bathrooms. Our kitchen, while large, was pretty barren when we moved into our home.
White walls, 10 foot ceilings and a lack of light fixtures made the room feel cold and unwelcoming. Since our kitchen is off of the main door to our home, it desperately needed dressing up.
We added a triple pendant light with custom glass globes over the sink and a pot rack over the center island.
Placed vases in a cool blue on the plant shelf over top the cabinets.
Under cabinet puck lighting was added to provide countertop and evening task lighting. For additional lighting effects (lighting can be HUGE in your home), I ran strands of rope lighting across the tops of the cabinets. When switched on, this yields a nice amber glow.
We painted the wall behind the stove a burnished, metallic copper.
And finally, removed all the cabinet doors and refinished the cabinet bases with a deep mahogany stain. It’s actually much simpler than it sounds and produces fantastic results. We get loads of compliments on our unique cabinets. Dress them up with simple steel, copper, or dark bronze hardware (if you don’t have hardware on your cabinets, i.e. knobs and pulls, buy some *now*) and you’ve performed a kitchen makeover.
To Stage This Kitchen, simply perform a thorough cleaning (including inside and out of your fridge and cabinet faces).
Remove any over-personal items (the laptops and knick knacks).
Stow your dish rack/drying racks (the dishwasher works well to hold these out of sight).
Rid the area of clutter and don’t forget to remove your magnets, photos, calendars, and pizza coupons from the fridge.
This past week, I set appointments with eight (8) local real estate agents and thankfully it’s all over. I say “thankfully” because in my mind, it was almost as grueling as those days back in high school of taking your SAT exams. Whew.
We interviewed agents from discount agencies to high end luxury realtors. Everyone had a different opinion and brought a little something different to the table. Each night, my husband and I sat down to discuss the pros and cons of the agents we had met thus far.
Who would represent our style of home the best?
Who fit and understood the lifestyle that surrounds living in a new urban development?
Were they excited to sell our home or just lazy? (You would be surprised how many said “I’m not really looking to list any homes right now”.)
Are they educated about home prices in our surrounding areas and market
Would buyers feel at-ease with this person?
Are they willing to “think outside” the standard marketing box or do they wish to just put a sign in the yard and hope buyers will arrive?
Finally, we are down to a list of two. We’ll make our final decision this week.
One of the first things you should do in preparation for selling your home- Create a Fix It List. Those little things that pile up after a few years of living some where. We, as homeowners, see them daily and live with them. Often, the repair or chore is so small, we overlook it.
Now’s the time to address those items.
Here’s the list for our house:
Finish staining the interior wood doors. We bought our wood doors unfinished (i.e. bare wood) with our home. 90% of them are finished, but there’s a remaining 3-4 that need to be completed.
Touch up walls, baseboard inside and any exterior areas.
Complete any projects. This is a big one for us since we are adding a movie theater, stage, concession area, efficiency kitchen and bathroom in our basement.
Thoroughly clean. This isn’t your weekly cleaning. Scrub from top to bottom. Remove furniture, clean your baseboards, grooves in the stairs, windows (inside and out), sashes, dust your curtains, etc.
Add custom closet organizers to bedrooms.
Other common items that people should check:
Check for any plumbing leaks. Fix them or have a plumber out.
Replace any light bulbs that are out.
Look over your flooring- check for cracks in tile, tears in vinyl/lineoleum, have the carpets or rugs cleaned.
Weather strip any doors or windows that are older or have lost their stripping.
If you have decks or porches, check for loose nails or boards.
Repaint any overly personal rooms to a lighter or more neutral tone. If your walls are solid white, consider a neutral cream, light tan, or similar color.
So, start thinking of that list, budget your time, and if you start now, it will be much easier down the road. Additionally, your home will show better to Realtors once you are ready for that stage.
Everything has fallen into place, and today my husband and I have decided to sell our house. We are a few months out from actually putting it on the market- we are hoping to be ready in early spring. I figured I would start this blog to track our progress and knowledge that we gain along the way.
Our home is two years old, so there is not a large amount of maintanence we need to do for sale preparation. However, we have a list of to-do’s that need to completed, and we are in the midst of finishing the basement (lower level) into a movie theater. And of course, there are plenty of odds and ends that we live with daily, that a home inspection will pick up.
I am going to start my lists! (One of my favorite hobbies… list-making…) Stay tuned for progress.
The 47 Designs blog is centered around our adventures in preparing our new home for sale during this tough market.
Follow along as I share my experiences with real estate agents, staging, finishing the "to-do" list, before and after photos, and even some alternative marketing strategies to make your home stand out.
Share your thoughts and knowledge! In these times, it's a great benefit if we can all learn from each other.
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