Seeing the Property Through the Buyer’s Eyes

Trying to see what a buyer sees in your house can be tough, but getting that glimpse is extremely important for preparing your house for sale. Remove your rose-coloured glasses and take an honest to goodness look at your property, warts and all.

Starting at the street, take an unbiased tour of the house, noting where your eyes are drawn. What is it that you notice first? Write down all the things you see that might turn off a buyer, from outdated carpet to leaky faucets, cracked Path to cracked ceiling, risqué artwork to religious symbols. Paying attention to even the smallest detail might earn you equity later.

As you tour the house, take pictures or jot down some notes of the areas that need attention. Based on what you want to invest in getting your home ready for sale, the notes and photos will help you prioritize your to do list later.

The goal of sale preparation is to sell a house in the shortest time for the most money by attracting the highest number of potential buyers. A 2007 HomeGain.com survey of 2,000 real estate professionals nationwide found home sale preparation can average 340% on the return of investment.

When prospective buyers review your property, you want them to put their full attention on how the property feels and what it will be like to live there. Through our research, we know that most buyers take between three to six minutes to tour your home. Three to six minutes to decide whether this is the place they want to spend the next part of their lives. You can’t waste a moment.

Minimize and remove any and all distractions that throw off the buyer from taking a closer look at your property. What are these distractions? Usually the day-to-day items, like a collection of teapots, spoons, china, and so on. Any collection may pull the buyers eye and waste some of those precious minutes, whether it’s a fabulous art collection, designer clothes, CDs, or gothic posters in the kids’ rooms — anything that derails the focus of the buyer from your house to your belongings. As harsh and premature as this may seem, do yourself a favour and pack away those personal items.

Buyers talk of falling in love with a house; however, it’s not the house they fall in love with but the concept of living in the house. The key to successfully sale preparation your house is starting a romance with the lifestyle your house represents.

Sale preparation your house gives you a competitive leg up when you enter the market. Professionally staged houses look better than nonstaged houses in the same price range. And when real estate professionals know your house is staged, they have confidence that the property will show well, and they therefore bring more buyers to look at it. So, sale preparation a house for sale is like being very well prepared when you go to a job interview — you have everything working for you.