Selling Home Winter

Selling a Home? Try these Wintertime Tips for Making the Process Simpler

If you are going to be selling your home in 2019, but you aren’t quite ready to put it on the market, you might be wondering what you can do to help ease the process later in the year. Below, you will discover five excellent wintertime tips for preparing your home (and even yourself) for the upcoming sale.

#1 – Choose Your Agent or Agency Early

Waiting until you’re 100% ready to put your home on the market to find the perfect real estate agent can cause some setbacks in the selling process. An experienced agent will not only help you sell your home more quickly – and at the price you ask – but he or she can also guide you through the entire process. Things like listing your home, taking photos, and even staging it for an open house or showing are all much simpler with an experienced real estate agent or agency backing you.

#2 – Start Downsizing Your Belongings and Pack what You Don’t Need

Even if you haven’t listed your home yet, there’s no reason why you can’t start purging and packing some of the things you won’t need before you get settled in your new place. In fact, winter is the best time of year to do this since outdoor home maintenance is so limited. Go through your closets, cabinets, and even your basement to decide what you need and what you don’t. Pack up the items you want to keep but won’t necessarily use, such as your summertime wardrobe. This will save you a ton of time later down the line. This year, the KonMarie method is an especially popular means of downsizing, so it’s one that you might consider.

#3 – Do Some Research

Educating yourself on the processes that go into selling a home – especially the legal side of things – can help you feel more comfortable with the entire process. Take the time to learn the difference between the assessed value and market value of your home, for example, which will help you command the best price for your home once you’re ready to list it. You can also read up on how closing works, make sure that you’ve had your roof, chimney, and HVAC system inspected, and find out what might happen if a potential buyer’s mortgage application falls through.

#4 – Add a Coat of Paint

Painting your house is by and large the best way to freshen it up and give it a “like-new” appearance. If you’re planning to sell in 2019, though, be sure that you’re careful with your color choices. Though a fire-engine red accent wall in the kitchen may look magazine-worthy, the goal here is to stick to neutral colors so that potential buyers can visualize themselves living in your house. Stick to off-whites, beiges, and perhaps even light shades of gray for the best possible results.

#5 – Consider some Small Updates and Upgrades

If you aren’t planning to renovate your home before selling it, there are still plenty of smaller, less expensive things you can inside your home do that may have an impact on the way buyers perceive it. For example, you can upgrade the main bathroom’s shower and faucet to something a little more high-tech and visually appealing, and you can swap out your kitchen cabinet and drawer hardware for options that are more modern and stylish.

Selling your home is a big endeavor. There’s quite a bit of work that goes into making sure everything is perfect, too. Following the tips above will help you get a head start on the process and make things much, much simpler when it comes time to actually list your home.