One of the most expensive parts of preparing a home for sale can be doing the wrong things. If you’re thinking about selling next spring, it may seem early to call us now. It isn’t. Some of the decisions that can have the biggest impact on your sale happen months before you ever get to market, and the more time we have to plan with you, the better.
Homeowners often start preparing on their own—painting a room, replacing fixtures, etc. Those may be good ideas, but without a plan, it’s easy to spend money in the wrong places. The question is what this particular house needs—and how far it makes sense to go.
We once worked with a seller who knew his roof needed replacing and was prepared to spend $15,000 before listing. I recommended that he wait. Spending $15,000 on a new roof was unlikely to add $15,000 to what a buyer would pay for the home. So rather than replace it upfront, we listed the home as-is and let the buyer tell us how much the roof mattered. After the inspection, the buyer accepted a $5,000 credit. Our seller kept the other $10,000.
That doesn’t mean sellers should never replace a roof. With a different home or market, we might recommend exactly that. Selling a home is both art and science. The science gives us a process: things we can systematize, measure, organize, and repeat. The art is in applying all of that to the particular home in front of us—seeing its possibilities and deciding what’s worth changing and what isn’t. That can be harder than it sounds. After living in a home for years, it’s easy to focus on the things that have always bothered you, or the improvements you’ve heard are supposed to add value. But those aren’t necessarily the things that will make the home more compelling to a buyer, and money spent in the wrong place is money you don’t get back. Sometimes the opportunity is in knowing what to change; sometimes it’s in knowing what to leave alone. That’s the art.
More time also gives us flexibility to choose the right season to sell. A home with a beautiful outdoor living area may show best in late spring or early summer, when everything is green, and we can stage the space so buyers can imagine spending their evenings there. Another home may come alive in the fall, when mature trees are changing color and a fireplace or cozy interior becomes part of the experience. The best time to sell isn’t automatically the same for every home. Buyers don’t experience a home as a spreadsheet of features; emotion matters. They’re imagining what it would feel like to live there. The better we can help them see and feel that life, the more compelling—and valuable—the home becomes.
You may have a long list of projects in mind, and our advice might be to do half of them. We may suggest something you hadn’t considered. Occasionally, we may tell you not to spend a dime. Give us a chance to walk through it with you, understand what you’re working with, and think about what will actually make a difference. Then we can make the right plan for your home—before you spend the first dollar.