Sell Your Home Faster
Curb Appeal Checklist
When selling your home the first impression is a lasting impression. Sometimes, a second chance will never happen. This checklist is designed to help you identify areas that with little expense, and just a bit of elbow grease, you can enhance the appeal of your home to more buyers. Take a good hard, objective look at your home from the road as you drive up to your house. What do you see? Garbage cans at the side of the house? Oil stains in the driveway? Landscaping gone wild? These are just some of the things that your buyer sees as they drive up. Even though these items may seem trivial, it can influence a buyer’s opinion of the house, and whether or not they even go inside.

The following checklist includes several items that you can do yourself to help sell your home.

Schedule a Professional Home Inspection
Having a professional home inspection prior to finding a buyer is essential to having the transaction go more smoothly. An inspection can identify areas that can be detrimental to the sale, that can cause costly negotiation, and slow down the process of closing.

Exterior of the Home
Mow the lawn, edge sidewalks and driveways, weed flower beds and trim shrubs.

Clean the driveway and keep your garage door CLOSED! Cluttered garages make home seem smaller than really are.

Keep your garbage container in the rear of the house or in the garage while the house is listed for sale. Also keep toys and bicycles from the yard. Placing them neatly along the side of the house or out of sight does a lot for first impressions.

Make sure your Realtor’s® for sale sign is upright and prominent.

Remove window screens from the front of the house and wash the windows. Store screens neatly until the home is sold.

Clean the front door, and frame, and even consider giving it a quick coat of paint. A tablespoon of vanilla extract in a gallon of paint will also cut the fumes significantly, and the pleasant scent will linger.

Dress up the front. A few inexpensive potted flowers can go a long way toward making the entrance of your home welcoming.

Interior of the Home
How does the house smell? Be objective. We become accustomed to the scents of our everyday lives – pets, tobacco, cooking, etc, but someone just walking in may have second thoughts. Don’t just mask these odors, remove the source until the house sells. If you have pets, keep the pet areas clean. If the house smells of tobacco, a de-odorization may be in order. Most carpet care companies can help in this regard. However, be careful of having air freshener or lots of scented candles around. The savvy home-hunter will see efforts to hide odors as a red flag.

When showing the house to prospective buyers, pleasant aromas will help sell a home quicker. A cinnamon stick simmered in a small saucepan prior to showing will impart a pleasant, but not overpowering scent.

Keep the kitchen clean and free of clutter to make it appear as spacious as possible.

Keep bathrooms free from clutter also. Keep commodes and sinks clean, including the base of the bowl. If you have children, keep the tub toys stored neatly. Remove any rust stains from tubs and sinks.

Clean and dust the window sills. Keep blinds open and raised. Make the home bright and cheery as possible.

Dust everything! Especially light fixtures, fans and fireplace mantels. Clean fireplaces of ash.

Keep furniture tidy, make beds, and keep dirty laundry in a closed hamper.

Clean and straighten closets. Consider putting out of season clothing into storage to make closets appear roomier. When doing the housekeeping, do not overlook the closets.

These few small steps have helped many home sellers find buyers quicker than sellers who don’t do anything. In review, having an EMH Home Inspection before prospective buyers look at your home can help you identify some of the areas that need attention as well as eliminate and identify potential “deal-breaking” conditions that may arise as a result of a last minute home inspection. Having this type of inspection can save you hundreds, and maybe even thousands of dollars in re-negotiation.

For Inspectors Who Do More, Call 620-3444