We just moved and sold our house. We did not make a profit but considered ourselves lucky we broke even.
The other poster was right. Put everthing you can in storage. Paint!!!. I went and looked at one of the new model homes in another neighborhood and copied everything I could. Open all of your windows and turn on all lights. Put air fresheners in all the outlets -- that you can safely do so.
Flowers evereywhere -- Mums are in season. Perk up your landscaping - we put about 0 in perking up our house, but when your talking 0,000s and 0,000s it really was a small price.
It was a pain keeping the house clean. Oh!!! I also did the cookie thing and with those refrig. cookie dough -- I ate half of the dough though . I had coffee with throw-away cups and those creamers you do not have to refig. I figured the more someone stayed in the house it might grow on them.-- Good Luck!!!
I think we spent a little under 00, but we got all of it back considering we thought we might have to go 00 under our asking price (but we didn't!).
It is a pain keeping the house clean I agree!
I thought the suggestion of going to look at a model home is a good idea. It is also worth it to go to other houses in your price range when they have open houses - gives you an idea of what to do and what NOT to do when selling your house!
Oh, and I watched H&G network a LOT for ideas about selling and what to do...We got a bridge loan and moved out, deliberately, before selling our house about 2 yrs ago. I had much family disapproval for this choice. But, we had 2 kids under 5 and both worked fulltime, and knew it was the only way to pull it off.
It was scary ... but WORTH it! An empty house, though perhaps it looks less welcoming, looks BIGGER! And this was a 1920's bungalow ... We had a good agent who knew how to market our house, worked our neighborhood, and we ended up pretty happy with the price we got. And -- it sold only two weeks after it went on the market.
Has anyone here gone through this? We are trying to sell our house because my husband's been relocated to another state. My dd went through a regression when we put the house on the market and trying to keep the house clean and stage is hard enough with a NT three year old, never mind a sensitive, not good with change ASD three year old. The housing market is really slow now and we haven't even had a offer in about five weeks, which isn't very long in this market. We drastically reduced the price this week to just get this over with. Our agent is not happy with us. But honestly I think it's worth it. My dd isn't doing well with this and making more money is just not worth it to us. Can anyone relate?
Okay - we just sold our house a few months ago.
First of all - paint everything if you can. De-clutter EVERYTHING. Rent a storage unit and put everything you can in it - you CAN live without some things for a few months. This is very important as it will make your house look neater and bigger. It will also be easier for you to clean up quickly.
Keep laundry baskets in each room and when they call to show your house - start dumping any clutter in the laundry baskets and take it out to your car and put it in (hopefully you have a van which will give you more room). OR do totes and put those in a corner in your garage after loading them up when they call.
Have an empty drawer in each room in the house to do the same.
Bake fresh cookies before buyers come and leave a fresh plate of cookies out for them to enjoy (this also gives a great smell to your house!). You can use those refrigerated ones that you just plop on the tray and put in the oven - it takes about 12 minutes total! And they usually give you at least 15-20 minutes (we asked for an hour notice, but rarely got it!).
If you don't have a DVD player in your car - buy one of those portable ones. Have several DVDs in your car so if you have to drive around with dd in the car - you can. We had buyers take WAY longer in our house and we ended up driving around for a half an hour or so - DVDs helped tremendously!
Buy books about moving. The Berenstain Bear's Moving Day is a good one. I had Mister Rogers' book recommended to me but never found it before moving!
Do social stories about moving to help prepare her.
I do understand about reducing the price just to save the hassle. I do worry that people will think there is something wrong with your house because you drastically reduced it though. That is what would go through our heads when looking as buyers. Money isn't everything, but we needed as much out of our house as we could get in order to get the house we ended up buying (and love!). Just an FYI - we priced it right originally. We sold it twice - once to buyers who kept haggling after accepting 0 under our listing price (yes, 0, not 00). We told them to make a reasonable offer but we were putting it back on the market (it had only been on 8 days originally - they took 2 weeks of haggling before we re-listed). It sold the next day after we put it back on - for 0 under our listing price! We totally de-cluttered, painted and touched up everything.
By the way, the de-cluttering really helped ease my ds' anxiety. He felt much better with the house clean and he had more room to run around and play!