Maximize Your Home’s Resale Value

Because our homes aren’t just where we live — they’re also a significant investment — when we sell, we hope to get the most out of our investment.

I believe there are a few things you can do to make sure your home shows well and sells quickly — at the highest possible price.

Making the Most of Your Space

How furniture is laid out in a room can have a big impact on how big (or small) the room looks. Your lifestyle may really suit the two love seats, couch and chair you’ve got crammed into the family room, or the table, with both leaves in it that seats eight in the kitchen. The big toy box and all the shoes in the hallway may be necessary facts of life for you. Your home office, with its overflowing bookshelves and file cabinet, well…that’s just the way you work. But these things can really add up to making a good-sized space seem smaller, and less desirable to a buyer for the price you’re asking.

Consider making small changes while your home is being shown. Would your family room look larger with two love seats facing each other? Would the kitchen feel more open with a table for just four? Would the office be more accessible with the books behind doors and the file cabinet tucked under the desk? Would the hallway seem more welcoming if the toy box was in a closet, and the shoes were on a rack? By removing, downsizing and rearranging items you can ensure prospective buyers have a clear path to move through your space, adding to its feeling of spaciousness and increasing the value for them.

The Art of Un-decor

Your place is probably decorated perfectly to suit your tastes. You love it — but it’s entirely possible that only you could love it which could really limit the number of new purchasers that are going to love it and want to buy it.

Taste is a very personal thing, and if your style leans towards very bold, wild or dark colours, or having every room be very different from the last, most new purchasers will only see your home from the point of view of how much work and expense it will take them to reverse all your decorating decisions.

Keep walls and window coverings neutral and try to create a colour flow from room to room. Neutral is what shows best and sells best — something real estate agents have proven time and time again.

If you’ve already got a neutral palette, make sure it’s fresh and up to date. Sometimes just washing walls in high traffic areas helps, other times a single coat of paint to touch up is required. A fresh coat of paint on baseboards and ceilings can really open up and light up a room, making it seem clean and new and well cared for.

Whatever you can do to make buyers feel like they can move in without any work is a big step towards selling your home.

I like to bring in an interior designer when I list your home to give you tips on how to stage your rooms so that you get your home sold faster and for the best value.  Looking forward to doing business with you.

Thanks Joe Salazar for the information.