When you’re preparing to sell your Arlington home, try to look at the property like a potential buyer. Try to be as detached and objective about it as possible.

Is the property neat, inviting, well-maintained, and clean? A few simple repairs, a fresh coat of paint, and a few other smart investments can help your home sell for its best price.

Declutter and Clean

If you’ve been wanting to join in on the trend of home minimalism and simplifying your life, now’s the time to start going through items and begin tossing whatever’s not adding value to your life anymore.

Getting rid of clutter in a room helps make it look more spacious — and provides a blank canvas for professional home stagers to work.

We tend to allow things that we haven’t used for years to accumulate in piles, cluttering the corners of spare rooms, entryways, and basements. Now’s the time to walk through your home one room at a time with a critical eye, looking for items you can pack, donate, or remove entirely.

Take on one room at a time and sort items into pack, donate, and trash categories. You can store these in a designated, organized area like a basement or a garage, or you can move everything into storage until your new home is ready. The goal is to make sure any prospective buyer that walks through your home can move easily through every room. You want to make sure your home’s best qualities shine through.

To make this process simple and easy, a good real estate team can put you in touch with a local removal service. These services are very affordable, and they save you lots of time by sending a truck directly to your home to haul away anything you need to donate or dispose of.

While you’re decluttering, don’t forget to…

Remove personal items

You want prospective buyers to look at your home and imagine their own lives inside of it. It’s much easier for buyers to imagine their own uses for the home if you’ve taken steps to clear your own family photos from the walls, carefully packed that quirky collection, and stowed your personal items out of view.

Any personal items lying around will distract prospective buyers. Make it easy on your buyers — clear these distractions away so that your home’s selling points become obvious.

As with the decluttering phase, anything you’re going to keep but need to hide from view can be organized into containers or packed into storage.

Repair

Any and all projects that you’ve been meaning to get around to — replacing light bulbs, oiling or replacing hinges, shoring up the landscaping, repairing siding… now’s the time to get those repairs underway. Small repairs and cosmetic improvements can give a buyer the overall impression that the home’s been well-maintained.

The goal is to repair everything to a point where a prospective buyer can walk through the home without becoming distracted by anything that’s broken, worn out, or stale. You’d be surprised what some new greenery and a freshly-painted front door can do for your home’s curb appeal.

Show your home

When you’ve made all necessary repairs; when your home is neat and sparkling clean; you’ll know your home is ready to list.

The right real estate team can help you with every step of selling your home, from removing clutter to hiring a contractor for repairs to getting your home professionally staged. A great real estate agent can also help guide you on exactly what renovations to perform to maximize your net profit.

To learn more about selling your home, contact The Keri Shull Team today. We’re the #1 team in Northern Virginia, selling over 3x more than our nearest competitor!