You have walked through the first part of your Feng Shui Analysis to help you sell your home and you’ve been left with a tough assignment: to emotionally say good-bye to your house. If you’ve taken this step, however, your job of de-personalizing the house and staging it for the next owners will be much easier.
De-personalize. It sounds so . . . surgical: removing the unwanted items to make the house more desirable to someone else. Forget “de-personalize” – nobody wants to live in a house that’s not personal. There’s nothing so personal as one’s own home. Certainly, the new owners will want a very personal space. So let’s call this process of preparing a home for sale what it really is: it’s a makeover — because the house needs to be ready for its close up. Every showing will be a close-up viewing. How do you start your house’s “makeover”? Ironically, it’s by projecting yourselves into your next home.
Ask your Realtor to help you prioritize your next “dream” home list and start thinking about where you’re going and why. With this intention in place, when you remove family photos from the walls of the house, it’s not about putting them out of sight; it’s about packing them up for the move and allowing potential buyers the opportunity to see the walls and the rooms without scrutinizing the faces in the photos. Leave some pictures of you enjoying the house! Your Realtor can help you identify the things that are red flags to potential buyers; sometimes those items are sacred objects to your and your family. Share the story of the objects before they are packed away. Your Realtor will probably take pictures after the “makeover” for the brochure and marketing materials. You can be proud of your contribution to making your home shine for its next owners.
Ask your Realtor to bring a Sold rider (the small signs that affix to the top or bottom of the For Sale sign) to put in your garage or storage during the listing process so you can see it every time you come and go. Write SOLD across your marketing flyer or brochure and post it on your refrigerator between showings. Seeing leads to believing!
It goes without saying that a clean, de-cluttered house is much more appealing to a potential buyer. Open windows, sweep the porch, clap in the corners, lightly spray the baseboards with water and essential oils (easily purchased at a bath and body store) and clean the furniture with lemon oil before a showing. A house that smells clean is a house that’s ready to move into.
What if you have to move before your house sells and it is left empty? That’s next in Part 3.
