I Want to Sell My Home – Am I Ready?

So you are ready to sell your home? But is your home ready to be sold? If you plan to sell your house, you might want to make it a little more habitable in the eyes of the would-be occupants who might take interest. The following are the things which might induce your buyers to puke and decline faster than a cheetah that needs to go to the toilet.

1. Horrific Houses
For goodness’ sake, you are selling your house for somebody to live in. You are not preparing your house for a horror show shooting or for another installment of Tarzan in the jungle! If your house gives mere passers-by a haunted feel, or if the vicinity is sprawling with unkempt bushes, dangling vines, and unruly looking trees, why oh why did you even put your house on sale?

Start fixing those hanging window frames and creaking doors if you want your buyers. Tidy up your lawn from all that sprouting grasses that seem to compete for the world record for Highest Grass of the Year. Trim those bushes neatly before you get the Adam’s Family House look-a-like award. If the ground is decently clean, the trees will not be as unruly as they would seem.

And look, your gutter is teeming with healthy flora peeping out for the sun! What?! Dear seller, your house is not an orphanage for stray grasses and plants so start cleaning seemingly even inconspicuous places like the gutter, and help improve the drainage of your home.

2. Smell Like Hell
If you happen to cross paths with someone who has a smelly armpit, the first thing that goes in your mind is – oops… got to scram for fresh air! That’s for encountering one person alone, whom you might never see again anyway. Now imagine meeting a house that smells the same way. How could any person with a right mind bear to live every day of his or her life in a house that smells like hell?

Of course they won’t. If your house smells like cigarette smoke, animal excretions, and goody-old molds, the next thing you know is your buyer is escaping like an Olympic runner and you stand outside the door of your smelly home, eating the dust that they leave behind.

Clean your house. Remove the smell. The awful smell does not sell. And one more thing - do not just spray deodorizers to conceal the odoriferous horror of your home. Pretty please.

3. The Welcoming Animal Party
Browny is really adorable. And your huge German Shepherd is your good old pal indeed. But they will not sell your house. Your buyers are not there to praise how well you take care of your pets but of how good you are maintaining your house.

Most people get the jitters when they meet dogs that they do not really know, so there is no need for your pets to be your welcoming party when you tour the buyers around the house. Really.

And your pets are not the only ones that you should keep at bay. If you have an unusual family of rats and cockroaches happily roaming around your house, you do not need to give them eviction notices, just go on and drive them out of your house.

Before you sell your house, make sure that your house  is already “marketable” looking to begin with.  You do not want to wait until you meet your own gravestone before you get your house sold right?