Have you made the decision to sell your home and move onto greener pastures? Selling your home or property can be the one thing that turns your life around and changes it for the better, just as long as you have enough marketing savvy to do it right.

That’s right – it takes more than just putting up a listing of your condo or house and hoping for the best. Selling a home at its maximum value involves careful grooming every step of the way, no different from grooming a prize-winning poodle as it’s getting ready for competition (except, you know, it’s a piece of real estate and not a poodle). Here’s how you can prep your home to make it shine in buyers’ eyes.

Prep your home to sell

• Cleanliness is next to godliness. You’ve heard that one, haven’t you? Well, it’s true: the cleaner your home is, the better-liked it will be by the buyers. As is the case with renters, sellers will often display a certain nonchalance when preparing their home for interested parties. Scratch that – they often won’t do anything to improve its appearance, period. For how easy it is to clean a home compared to some of the other ‘improvements’ ahead of sale, a staggering amount of sellers don’t bother making it shine and pay the price as a result (or rather, the buyers pay them far less). Let’s face it – nobody likes the idea of having to do carpet and tile cleaning as soon as they’ve moved in, so do your best to eliminate a need for scrubbing on the future owner’s part.
• Don’t go too heavy on room additions. Quite a few home owners feel that adding new rooms or expanding existing ones is necessary before a home sale (or even a good idea). In reality, there are multiple issues with making these kinds of modifications on your home pre-sale: it will drive the price up and possibly make it too high in comparison to the rest of the neighborhood homes, it will make a dent in your pocket that might not be straightened out any time soon, and the home’s future owners might simply not want it.
• Minor upgrades mean the world. You don’t have to perform a massive overhaul ahead of your home sale. For example, you might be shocked to learn just how big of a difference a set of new living room furniture can make. Not the cheapest acquisition, sure, but it definitely beats major modifications that involve new kitchens, new bathrooms or tearing down walls. Start by checking out the furniture in your living room, then move onwards to the study (if there is one), the bedroom and even the kitchen. Does the whole thing have a budget feel to it? If so, a nice addition or two will pay off dividends when setting the price for your home.
• Make use of your basement. If you skipped on spring cleaning, ‘before the sale’ is as good of a time to move unwanted objects from sight as any. Don’t sell a home that features your thousand-strong collection of subway tokens or action figures – if an item isn’t doing much aside from holding an emotional significance to you, put it in a box and store it away from sight. Ask yourself this: Can I imagine a home looking like this being featured in a real estate magazine?