Tag Archives: Minimize

HOW TO GET RID OF CLUTTER to Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 Hours!

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That means taking down the knickknacks, picking up the toys and hiding away all of your other home accessories that aren’t a necessity.  This also means that some of your family photos may need to make the move to the moving box for a bit.

What is clutter?  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as: to fill or cover (something) with many things.  Yes, that about describes our home.  Surprisingly clutter was harder to get rid of than it was to minimize.  Clutter for us wasn’t about knickknacks though there certainly were a couple of those.  It was more about getting rid of all of the little catch all containers around the house.   You know, the little container that collects mail, or the one for coins, or the one with little things you don’t want to lose, but only ever look at once a year.  I found with clutter, I needed to be honest with myself—would I or would I not ever use this item again.  Clutter in your kitchen could be all of the little “tools” you bought and they sit on your counter.  You know, the coffee grinder, the Keurig coffee maker, the coffee scoop, that utensil container, and every other thing that started to become a permanent resident.

Some people love family pictures everywhere.  Unfortunately, other people, potential house buyers will love looking at your family too.  They’re curious about the family they’re potentially buying the house from. So what you run the risk of is people becoming gawkers of your family instead of shoppers from your house.

From personal experience, I think this is one of the most important steps, but hardest.  Recently Doug and I did a little house shopping.  One of the houses had so much stuff (knickknacks, pictures, magazines, trinkets, refrigerator magnets, etc) that I couldn’t tell you what one of the rooms looked like.  Not one and I’m the kind of person that prides myself in remembering details.

Take this opportunity to organize those trinkets and give the others a chance to live elsewhere through charitable giving to Goodwill.  All of those papers you were looking to organize, do it.

When you are done de-cluttering you should be able to see every surface.  You should be able to see your entire counter, your entire table, your entire computer desk and your entire dresser.  Have loads of shampoo in your shower?  Pick one shampoo and conditioner.

Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.

MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE to Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 Hours!

Selling a Home, , , , , ,

This one is hard for most people (we discovered we are indeed hoarders) and may cost a little money in storage units or can make you some money depending on what you want to do.  But minimizing your house will help give people the space to imagine what their belongings will look like in it.

What does minimizing really mean?  Minimizing is defined by Google’s dictionary as: reduce (something, especially something unwanted or unpleasant) to the smallest possible amount or degree.  Well I’m not sure if the things we “reduced” were unwanted or unpleasant, but our house certainly does look empty without them.  Basically, you want your home to look as close to a model home as possible—and model homes do NOT have a lot of personal effects.

So how much has to go?  Well that really depends on your space.  In our living room we had a bookcase, couch, loveseat, chair, coffee table, two end tables, a large TV cabinet and a baby swing and bouncer.  To us, it looked neat and tidy…to the realtors it was too much stuff.  Basically, start to look at your items and ask yourself, “Do I HAVE TO have this right now?”  If the answer is no, then it’s time to start looking into some sort of move or storage.  For us, we split our things between two locations.  Our move will take us from Missouri back to Ohio so we opted to go ahead and move half of our things back to Ohio and put them into a storage facility until we arrived.  Storage facilities are very affordable these days and for a 10 x 20 foot unit we’re paying about $65 a month.  In our minds, this is well worth it in that it enhances our house’s visual appeal and gets our stuff closer to where it needs to be.  So we drove a 17 foot Uhaul from Missouri to Ohio filled with excess furniture, boxes of clothes and holiday decorations and anything else we could fit that we wouldn’t need for the next few months.  The funny thing is, I don’t miss any of it!

Next we arranged our garage to be able to be a secondary storage location for items we needed more regularly but that cluttered the house for showings.  We used the garage for storage of dog crates, large baby items, our hutch and continue to add to the growing mass as we continue to pack.

Basically, by getting rid of all of the excess furniture in the visible part of the house (not closets, cabinets, drawers), it makes the house look bigger and lets people’s imagination run wild!

One other option while you’re minimizing, start to assess whether you really need the item or not.  Garage sales and Craigslist can be an excellent way to rehome some of your items.  That means less stuff to move and more money in your pocket!  We’ve sold MANY items on Craigslist.  The safest way, is to meet the individual at a police station when selling the item.  Other options if this isn’t convenient are other highly trafficked places with security like the Post Office, Government buildings or grocery stores.

Join us tomorrow as we cover “HOW TO GET RID OF CLUTTER!”
Miss HOW TO PICK AN AWESOME REALTOR?  

Check out the first post in this series of 10 MUST DO’S TO Get an Offer on your Home in 48 Hours! 

Though the dog is the focal point of the picture look at all of the furniture in the picture.
Though the dog is the focal point of the picture look at all of the furniture in the picture.
And again here, there's a lot of furniture in the background (of course there's also a talking squirrel!)
And again, there’s a lot of furniture in the background (of course there’s also a talking squirrel!)
Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.
Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.  We also added a new light fixture and removed the one that was hanging.  It made the room so much brighter and more open feeling.

How to Find an Awesome Realtor to Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 hours!

Selling a Home, Uncategorized, , ,

Realtors these days are a dime a dozen.  Heck, you probably have a friend, neighbor or relative that will list your house for you “cheap”.  And why not, they are family right?  Well think again.  If you’re going to pay money for anyone, you’ll want to pay the very best you can find.  And while that might be Aunt Susie the selling machine, chances are it’s not.  We looked for the best we could find.

How did we find an awesome realtor?  We started the process by looking for some of the top realtors in our area.  We didn’t want the person pursuing this career on the side selling one house every few months, we wanted the person that sold one a week.  We also wanted to make sure they fit our personality and could help us meet our selling goal of getting it under contract before we left Missouri.  The best way to do this is by interviewing your potential candidates.  Get a feel for them.  You’re going to be talking to them almost every day for the next month or two so make sure you like them.  And I say like them, not LOVE them.  You have to like and TRUST them enough to handle probably your biggest asset.  Ask them a lot of questions and take the feedback and use it.  We asked ours: How quickly can we get on the market, what kind of sales plan did they have, where would they list us, what kind of marketing tools would they use, could they walk the house and give us some pointers, how much is their sales percentage.  When they leave or better, before they get there look at their website.  Does it make you want to buy a house?  Do they have other homes in your price range or do they only sell million dollar homes?

Basically though, the main things that won us over with our realtors:
1. They brought us a Market Analysis of other homes in the area that we were selling and showed us aa few of the homes in there they sold.  They were detailed with prices, features and pictures.  This was very different from the 1 or 2 pagers other agents bought us.

2. They had their own marketing person.  They focused on their core competency (selling homes, talking to buyers/sellers) and let a marketing person work on her core competency—marketing.  That meant there was a person working on marketing specifically for our house versus the agent trying to make time to do it.

3. They had some great marketing tools.  Some of the agents just described getting an online presence.  These agents went a step farther.  They made up packets all about our house for people to take (with full color pictures of the entire listing), they asked us to fill out information about what we loved about the house and what we loved about the community and used this as a free standing display for house shoppers and they sent letters to agents that were showing homes in the area like ours.  We felt these and some of their other strategies were the kinds of marketing we were looking for.

4. They weren’t afraid to offer us honest opinions about things we needed to change in the house (yes, that wallpaper really is ugly and needs to go!) and helped give pointers about rearranging things to be more visually appealing.

5. Finally, their rate sounded like a steal for the marketing they did.  Basically, when you sell a home part of the profit of your home goes to paying the Selling agent and part goes to the Buyer’s agent.  Rates run anywhere from 4% to 7%.  So basically if you sell your home for $150,000 you’ve agreed to a 6% rate with your agent they’ll get $9000 and you’ll get $141,000.  From that $9000 your agent gets they give a percentage (somewhere around half) to the buyer’s agent.  So when you choose an agent ask the rate, but also see if that makes sense for the work they’ll do.  When I sold my last house, I felt I didn’t have the best agent out there, but they got 6% and only listed the house on MLS.  And now, my fast paced, high selling agent also got 6% and I have no problem paying it.

Join us tomorrow as we explore how to MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE!

 

Ten MUST DO’S TO Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 hours!

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The house was listed on Friday night in the MLS, we didn’t allow the first people to go through until the open house on Sunday and by Monday afternoon we had an offer!!  Now, after the offer/counteroffer process we’re entering into the next stage of home selling…THE INSPECTION PHASE.

But how did we do it?  How did a home owner with FOUR dogs, TWO cats and a baby get their home ready for sale so quickly and get that 48 hour offer?  Well we’ll share what worked for us.

Follow us as I explore each point in more detail.

  1. FIND AN AWESOME REALTOR-Realtors these days are a dime a dozen.  Heck, you probably have a friend, neighbor or relative that will list your house for you “cheap”.  And why not, they are family right?  Well think again.  If you’re going to pay money for anyone, you’ll want to pay the very best you can find.  And while that might be Aunt Susie the selling machine, chances are it’s not.  We looked for the best we could find.
  2. MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE!-This one is hard for most people (we discovered we are indeed hoarders) and may cost a little money in storage units or can make you some money depending on what you want to do.  But minimizing your house will help give people the space to imagine what their belongings will look like in it.
  3. GET RID OF CLUTTER– That means taking down the knickknacks, picking up the toys and hiding away all of your other home accessories that aren’t a necessity.  This also means that some of your family photos may need to make the move to the moving box for a bit.
  4. De-PET the HOUSE AKA GET RID OF FLUFFY-Okay, so you don’t actually have to get rid of Fluffy, but some people love the discovery of pet hair in a house (OH LOOK HONEY, BY THE COLOR OF THE HAIR THEY MUST HAVE A GOLDEN RETRIEVER!), but most people DON’T.
  5. NEUTRAL COLORS-If you love bright bold colors, good for you, so do I.  But that doesn’t mean everyone does and some people have a hard time getting over it.
  6. INCREASE CURB APPEAL–The first thing people see when they browse through 100’s of houses online is the front of your house.  And what’s the first thing they see when the cruise up with the realtor or are patiently waiting for the realtor to unlock the door?  Curb appeal!
  7. FIX ALL THOSE THINGS YOU’VE BEEN MEANING TO DO-You know what I’m talking about.  Those things you said you were going to do when you move in.  Or maybe that knick you put in the front door when you moved in.
  8. WALLPAPER and OTHER SPECIAL TOUCHES-When was the last time you heard someone say, “Oh my gosh honey THIS HOUSE HAS WALLPAPER…I LOVE IT!”  Ummm…NEVER.
  9. KNOW YOUR HOUSE-You need to be able to look at your house like a buyer and if you can’t, find an honest friend that will serve it to you straight.
  10. CLEAN HOUSE-A clean house is a happy house.  And if you’re like most of America you don’t have time to do the cleaning the way it should be done.

 

BONUS-Join us after we explore the 10 MUST DO’S TO GETTING AN OFFER IN 48 HOURS to explore GETTING YOUR HOUSE READY FOR A SHOWING IN UNDER 2 HOURS

Notice the very minimal items in the shelving. They were packed with books and trinkets.
Notice the very minimal items in the shelving. They were packed with books and trinkets.