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5 Ways to Prepare Your Home for Sale in the New Year

Are you planning to sell your home in the new year?! You can do many things to prepare your home for sale.

Below, we've listed five things you can do to help ensure your house is ready to put on the market when the time comes. By fixing maintenance problems, meeting with a realtor, staging, and performing other tasks, you can get your house ready for sale.

1. Fix Maintenance Problems

Many home buyers expect the house they purchase to be "move-in ready," free from maintenance problems that they must address as soon as they take possession of the place.

Repairing maintenance problems before you list your house for sale makes your property more desirable to buyers and can improve your home's value. Remember that many home buyers will reduce their offer when they know they need to make repairs on a home, and often, buyers will reduce their offer to an amount that's more than the repair cost itself.

2. Meet With a Realtor

An excellent real estate professional can give you advice that can help make your home more attractive to buyers. Meet with a real estate professional earlier rather than later, so you'll have time to make any changes to your property that the real estate professional recommends.

3. Start Staging

Staging is making your house look ready for buyers to move in. To stage your home, start by replacing any old, beat-up furniture with something new. Coordinate your furniture with your home decor to create a unified and attractive look in your house. Some tips:

  • Choose a color scheme and coordinate decor and furniture to the color scheme

  • Clean your house thoroughly

  • Put away personal items like collections and family pictures

  • Add decorative touches like candles, throw blankets and pillows, fruit bowls

  • Consider painting the walls of any rooms that need extra TLC

4. Get an Inspection

After making an offer on your home, most buyers will pay a home inspector to walk through your house and look for maintenance problems. The home inspector will write a report that may compel the buyer to ask for repairs. The buyer may back out of the home purchase if the information turns up something expensive and unexpected.

You can avoid problems during the sale process if you get an inspection on your own and then make repairs before listing your house for sale. Talk to a real estate agent to determine if you should get an assessment before listing your home for sale.

5. Declutter

Buyers like to see airy, clean spaces, but clutter makes your home look smaller than it is. So before listing your house for sale, start decluttering the rooms of your house, like the living room, bedrooms and storage areas. Consider getting a storage unit if you need space to place your extra things.

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