Your home is your castle. It’s the place where you’ve made some of your most precious memories. But now it’s time to move on, begin a new chapter, and make new memories.
And that means it’s also time to put your beloved house on the market. Unfortunately, though your home may long have been the apple of your eye, prospective buyers may not see it quite that way. That means that you’re going to need to see your house as a prospective buyer would and prepare it for the market with the clinical and objective eye not of a homeowner but of a marketer.
The good news, though, is that preparing your home to sell doesn’t mean you have to break the bank with renovations and refurbishments. Indeed, with a bit of decorating know-how, a dash of design strategy, and some clever marketing, you can transform your home into the marvel of the marketplace. This article shows you how.
Designing for a Universal Audience
When you’re preparing to put your house on the market, the first and most important thing you can do is get rid of those quirky style choices that made your home distinctly your own. The key is to stage the home so that when prospective buyers walk in, they can envision their own family living in it.
This doesn’t mean that you need to gut the space or scrub it of all signs that a family is or once lived there. Actually, that’s far from it. What you need to do instead is create spaces that are not empty but, rather, that are neutral.
Use color palettes that are warm and inviting but not distracting and intrusive. Fill the space with furnishings that are cozy and welcoming but not overbearing. Remove family photos and personal mementos and replace them with paintings and photographs. Landscapes and nature themes tend to have the most universal appeal while infusing the space with a sense of life and serenity.
Call in a Home Inspector
One of the most significant challenges of preparing your home for the market is knowing how to assess your home objectively. Over the years, you may have become blind to problems that are glaringly obvious to strangers.
This is why it’s critical to call in an outside expert to help you get your home show-ready. Getting a home inspection is an ideal way to make your home more attractive to prospective buyers.
An inspection will alert you to issues with your home and, thus, prevent nasty surprises during contract negotiations. It can also be a great selling point for would-be buyers because you can present an updated inspection report, as well as a list of repairs and upgrades that have subsequently been made. This can expedite the closing process while ensuring buyers that they’re getting a turnkey property.
Unleash the Power of Social Media Marketing
No matter how on-point your decor may be nor how universal your design aesthetic is, your home won’t sell if buyers don’t know about it.
This is why it’s critical that you take your marketing game to the next level by unleashing the power of social media marketing. Through social media marketing, you’re not just going to be able to alert prospective buyers that your home is on the market, but you’re going to be able to illuminate all the unique attributes that make your home stand out.
With social media marketing, for example, you can combine still images with video clips to enable your buyers to get a feel for the home’s interior and exterior spaces at varying times of day and in myriad weather conditions. The more familiar they become with the house, the more it will begin to feel like a home.
This is especially true if you use your social media platforms to showcase not just the property but the neighborhood. Give your audience a brief walking tour down the block. Show them the community. Help them begin to get a sense of settling into the neighborhood even before they make an offer. This way, you overcome the limitations of a one-and-done showing.
The Takeaway
Selling your family home can be a painstaking and highly emotional process. It can be difficult, after all, to view your family nest the way a prospective buyer would. But with some effort and a bit of strategy, it’s possible to decorate and market your home in a way that is truly irresistible to buyers. The key is to create a neutral design palette while also ensuring that the space feels lived in and inviting. It also means capitalizing on the value of a home inspection and unleashing the power of social media to attract would-be buyers both to your home and to your neighborhood.
Sam Bowman authored this blog post
