Selling
Getting your home ready
What is worth spending money on, what staging actually does, and why you should not oversell the house.
Preparation is where a lot of money gets wasted and a lot of money gets made, usually in that order if nobody is paying attention.
The walkthrough
Most of the facts are already available before I arrive. Bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, age, whether it has been renovated. I can pull the old listing.
So the first walkthrough is not an inspection. I ask you to tell me what you did to the place and what you love about it. Partly because it makes the whole thing more relaxed, and partly because that is how I find out where the real value is. The things an owner is proud of are usually the things a buyer will pay for, and they are almost never on the data sheet.
Where the money goes
Paint and decluttering. Every time, in that order, and it is not close. They are the cheapest changes with the largest effect, and they are the two things buyers notice within about eight seconds of walking in.
Beyond that it depends on the house, and I would rather tell you not to spend than watch you put $30,000 into a kitchen that returns $12,000.
Staging
I bring in professionals when the house needs it, and I pick based on how you want to work. Some companies build a plan and you do the work. Others come in and do it themselves. Both are good. Which is right depends on your time and your patience.
Staging also handles an awkward conversation well. Nobody enjoys being told their furniture is not helping. A stager says it as a professional making a house sell, which is easier to hear and easier to act on.
The part people get wrong
Half-finishing a renovation is worse than not starting one. If the house needs work, we price it and present it as a house that needs work, and the right buyer is fine with that.
If a house needs work, we sell it as a house that needs work, and we price it for the buyer who wants that. If it is fully renovated, we sell it as a fully renovated house and we go get that buyer. Both of those are winnable. What does not work is dressing up one as the other, because the market sees through it and you lose the time.
That is probably my biggest takeaway from all of this. Sell the product for what the product actually is.
How long it takes
Two weeks is a good target. Some people take six months, and that is fine if the timing is not urgent. What matters is that we launch when the house is ready, because the first two weeks on the market are the ones that count and you only get them once.
Written by Mike Elsey, Broker, Royal LePage Real Estate Associates, Brokerage. General information about the process in Ontario, not legal, financial, tax, insurance or inspection advice.