How to Prepare Your Home for Sale in a Shifting Housing Market! Audra Lambert 2024.

As promised, I am doing a updated how to prepare your house for sale in this marketplace. Today is September 7th, 2024. Yes, we are in a much different market than we were three years ago. The market is slowing. You need to pay attention to the things I'm gonna discuss in this video. If you wanna pull top dollar, get your house off the market relatively quickly. So let's get into it. One of the most important things you can do as a home seller is declutter. I know you're sick of hearing that. But let me tell you, whatever you think declutter means, it's way different than what Audrey Lambert means. What I mean by declutter is get rid of 30 to 40% of what you have in your house. I just went to visit a client before I'm doing this video and they had their house all prepared beautifully for me. And I'm like, hey, you guys did a great job. You still need to take 30 to 40% down. And they were horrified and offended. This is no longer your home where you dwell. This is your investment and you need to neutralize it the best way you can. And one of the ways to do that is to declutter, take down all those little things. So if you have little things that are like this big and you got a lot of them, get rid of them. You gotta declutter. If you have any photos of family members, you wanna get rid of those or any vacation travels. You want to have very little out. Your house should look like no one lives there. Seriously. The best compliment you can get is when a buyer comes in and says, does the seller still live here? Best compliment ever. Well done. We also want to depersonalize. So of course take the family photos down, but a lot of you like to put your awards that you won or your kids' soccer trophies or things that you've done travel-wise. No, you take all that down. We want the visitors to come in and not feel like they're intruding in your space. And yes, they are, but we don't want them to feel that way. Also, it's for security reasons as well. You don't want somebody looking on the photos online and seeing that you graduated from somewhere and there's all these scammers calling and creating urgency. And you just trust me on this. Take down all personalized items. If you're looking and you're wondering, I don't know, does this qualify or not? Don't second guess it. Just take it down, okay? I know, you're gonna move anyway. You gotta take this stuff down anyhow. Okay, if your carpet is icky and dirty and has stains on it, now is the time to have it replaced. Now, I'm not saying replace it with the super high-end, super duper stuff. I'm just saying the house needs to look clean. Try to clean the carpet, but if it's weird colors like purple, green, red, orange, and it's not neutral and it's looking kind of nasty or mashed down, you should probably replace it in today's market, okay? Now, I know a lot of you sellers out there are like, no, I'm not doing that. It's such a pain in the neck to get carpet replaced. It's so expensive now too. And I don't know what the buyer is gonna do. Maybe they wanna put hardwood floors or maybe they wanna put some tile or some laminate. So I would rather just give the buyers a credit. So the problem with that strategy is most buyers will always overestimate the cost of replacement. So if you do have carpet that needs to be replaced, I'm gonna recommend that you replace it with a neutral color. And these are some carpet samples that I like. Okay, do you guys see this? Okay, you'll notice they're not super fluffy, okay? They're very neutral. And you'll see there's one in particular that's really white. It's this one right here. Now, I know most people don't like white, but what I love about a lighter color is that it makes the property look larger. Anything like this, in my opinion, works. Low pile, doesn't have to be super fancy. What I'm not in love with is this stuff. Now, a lot of you have this stuff out here because it's cheap. What I don't love about this is it's thicker. Buyers will wanna replace it because they have animals and some of you have allergies out there. Not in love with super fluffy carpet. Not in love with it. And most of your buyers won't be either. So when in doubt, we're gonna go neutral. We're gonna go a little bit tighter pile. And as far as the padding, you don't have to overspend, but I would recommend if you have animals that may have soiled it, we don't wanna keep that same nasty padding in there because you will not be able to get that smell out of your carpet. Now, I know a lot of you are like, no, I don't smell it. Trust me, you just acclimated. Your buyers will smell it. So if you do have a lot of damage from pets or kids or whatever, I would replace the padding as well. Different market, you need to track that buyer. Something else I'm highly recommending that you do is deep clean your property. Now, when I tell sellers this, there's usually two types of cleaners, right? There's the one that goes around and tidies up and organizes and picks up and folds things. And the other one that goes in there and actually uses the cleaner and the sponge and the vacuum. And so what I'm asking you to do in this video is both. You need to tidy up and you need to deep clean. Now, it is my recommendation that you hire someone that does that deep cleaning. Like, you know, your window treatments are probably really dusty, right? Your window sills are probably really dirty. You need to wash your windows. You want to give the impression that you have been maintaining your house throughout the years and it's all perfect, okay? House has to shine. So I will save you all a lot of time and hassle because I've created two checklists for you. I will link down in the description these checklists. So one's a staging and one's a home inspection checklist. I recommend that you look at both of these and try to tackle as many as you can. It'll be very helpful and should help you with a successful home sale and a successful home inspection. Very important. It helps preserve your equity. In my opinion, all the towels in the property should be white or neutral in color. Now, a lot of you are asking me, Audra, how do I fold my towels? Now, if you go on YouTube, there's all these different videos on how to fold towels, but I'm just telling you, like if you open your pantry door, it's always impressive when you open a pantry door and all the towels are stacked beautifully. And I think what a lot of you out there don't know about folding a towel. I know this sounds crazy. I don't even know if you can see it, but here's a towel, okay? It's neutral in color. So you're going to fold it in half. You see that? Fold it in half, okay? Most of you fold it the wrong way. And then you're going to fold the first flap over, the second flap over, okay? And you're going to, it's going to look like this, okay? So look at this here. You see how you just, see, go like this. I'm going to take this flap. It's hard to do when I'm holding it up like this. And you're going to take the second flap, okay? There you go. And then watch this. You take this side and flap it over. I don't know. I didn't do that very good. There you go, okay? But the key is, you fold the towel in half. A lot of you like to just, you know, do the fish wrap kind of thing. Now, I know, it looks really pretty when they're all stacked, you know, right on top of each other. Okay, that was a horrible demonstration, but I highly recommend that you go on YouTube. There's a lot of ways to fold towels, but it looks spa-like, right? You want people to walk in and go, wow, this is so tidy. I just really enjoy it. And you know what that experience is like when you're at a hotel and all the towels are stacked beautifully, or if you go to a spa and all the towels are rolled a certain way. I don't know, just relaxing and you just feel at peace. And that's what we're trying to create here. Let's talk paint. Now, a lot of you don't want to paint because you have all your stuff in your house and you have paintings and all the debris and stuff leaned against your walls and it's a royal pain in the neck to paint your house. It is. And your buyers don't want to go through that pain in the neck either, okay? So because the market's changed a little bit, I'm highly going to suggest that you paint your house in a neutral color. If you have wild colors, I have wild colors in my house. You can see even my fireplace back here is black. Like most people probably wouldn't like that. But if I were to put my house on the market, more than likely, I would go around and neutralize the colors in my house. And I'm going to recommend that you do the same. Right now, I have a client that had a really cool house. I loved it. It was kind of a moody house. They put a ton of money into it, but it just didn't resonate with a lot of the buyers. They just couldn't get over the paint color. So just now, like last week, we painted the whole thing white and what color white do I recommend? Number one choice is Dunn-Edwards Swiss Coffee. Second choice, Dunn-Edwards Whisper. And I love Benjamin Moore White Duck. You just can't go wrong with those. You don't even need to buy a sample. Just go paint it on the wall. This is not your forever home, I promise. These colors never, ever disappoint, okay? So anyway, with that said, white is the color of choice. And the reason why I love white is because it shows beautifully in the photos. When your buyers come in, they're like, whoa, the house looks so clean. It looks larger. It really does make an impact. So some of the feedback that we got on this one client's house that I was referring to was that it just looked dark and they just couldn't really get the color. So just this last week, we painted the house white and we are replacing their carpet with this color. And I'm telling you, it's going to make the house pop and we're gonna sell it probably within 30 days because of this change. The house has been on the market for about 45, 50 days right now. The feedback's consistent. In this market, you don't want your house on the market for long periods of time. So one of the ways to do that is to make your house shine online. You're gonna use white paint, you're gonna use white towels, and you're gonna use a lighter, more neutral carpet. I promise, this makes a world of difference. Okay, it's that time again. I'm gonna ask you to subscribe to my channel. I'm almost at 50,000 subscribers. You can make history today. And I just want you guys to know that I don't make very little money on YouTube. I'm here to just educate and help you all. And I get like beat up all the time on this channel. You gotta listen to this. I got this voicemail this morning. I can't make this stuff up. Let's see, where's my mic? Okay, listen to this. Thank you so much for your YouTube videos. I love them. But you're cackling, your laugh is annoying. But the information you provide is very appreciated. Oh my gosh. All right, people. I'm not here to entertain you. I'm here to educate you. And I love to laugh. So if you like my laugh and you like this channel, please subscribe to my channel and smash that like button. And please make any comments of any other topics you would like me to discuss. Let's get back into it. I also want you to go around your house and try to take down any bright colors. A lot of you have some really bright throw pillows or you have really bright colored plates that are displayed or maybe your artwork's like just too loud. Don't get me wrong, I like some color, but let's not overdo it. And I think a lot of you like, oh, we need to have a pop of color to show a little life. The reason why I don't like bright colors isn't because I'm weird, I like neutrals. I don't photograph well. Now I will link down below a channel that is totally dedicated. It's a separate channel that I have that shows some of the houses that I have put on the market. So you can kind of get an idea what I mean by neutral. We don't have red and orange bright pillows. We don't have a lot of specialty items. We wanna neutralize. We'll look at restoration hardware or pottery barn or just go on to Pinterest. What's trending right now in housing trends? You'll notice there's not a lot of bright colors. And if there are a lot of bright colors and you're starting to see that starting to trend, don't worry about it. Go back to neutral. Neutral makes the house look larger. And remember, when we're taking those photos, we don't want your pillows or your artwork to stand out. We're trying to stage and make your house look bigger. We're trying to sell your home. We're not trying to make it a museum or an exhibit. It's mainly about showcasing your home. So when a buyer comes in, they're not gonna be buying your throw pillows or your furniture. They're gonna be looking at your floors. We wanna highlight those. They're gonna be looking at your lighting accents. They're gonna be looking at the kitchen and the cabinets. And we wanna highlight those. And we don't wanna take away. So take away a lot of that color. Make sure you don't overdo it with throw pillows and accent pieces that take away from the overall feel of the home. When you're preparing your house for sale, we're gonna declutter. And if you are putting some of those accent pieces in, you wanna do the odd rule. So one, three, or five, right? So maybe you do a collection. If you're doing a coffee table, you put three items or maybe five items. But we don't have usually even items. And if you see a house that's very well balanced, if you look really closely, you'll notice that they're using that three rule, only three items instead of maybe two. Just think of that when you're putting your accessories on the tables. And also, I prefer larger pieces. I prefer less and then maybe one big huge picture or one big base. It makes more of a statement and allows your buyer to kind of visualize more of their things rather than looking at too many things and it gets distracting. Now you can see probably in my bookshelves here that I have a lot of things, because I like a lot of things. But if I was putting my house on the market, I would probably weed out about 30 or 40% of those things. Now you should also go around the house and make sure all of your light bulbs are working, okay? For two reasons. Number one, when you have visitors, you do want to put all your lights on, okay? So a lot of people don't know that. And like, well, what? It's the middle of the day. I don't need lights on. Yes, you do. And a lot of you have those fancy little dimmers and you want to create a mood. No, they'll go all the way to the top, okay? With your white paint and your white carpet. You want to make the house look large and light and bright. Why? Because that's what people want right now. At least in my experience in my area. So the light bulbs need to be in place. And also when your inspector comes, if you don't have a light bulb functioning, they will call it out in a home inspection as inoperable. And let me tell you, your buyer doesn't like that word. They're allergic to the word inoperable. Trust me on this. Every room in the house should have a specific purpose, right? So right now I'm in my living room and I'm using it as my YouTube studio. So it looks really pretty behind here. But if you guys walked into my house, you'd be like, wow, that looks kind of junky, right? Because this is not meant for a YouTube studio. It's meant to be a living room. So if I were to sell my house, I would take all my YouTube equipment out, right? Because I want the buyers to know what the purpose of this room really should be used for. So I've seen things like where the dining room, they put a bed in there or, you know, they have just some things in the house that shouldn't be there and it's not the purpose of the room. Highly suggest that you stage or put furniture in areas to make sure the buyer's aware of what the use of the room is. I see a lot of times like in kitchens, they have like kitchen nooks and they can't figure out where the dining table goes. You should not have your buyer ever guess what each one of the room of your house is supposed to be used for. This is a pet peeve of mine. These are these little mats, little mats that you put like in your bathroom, right by the toilet where God knows what drops down there and why there's a mat to begin with, right? Kind of gross. And we have like the kitchen mat. So underneath the sink, which you know, it's dropping other icky stuff. Or you go to the primary bathroom and there's like all these mats underneath the vanities in the bathroom. And no, you guys, you're gonna have visitors. Even if they're barefooted, they're gonna walk on your mat. So we're gonna take the mats out. Take them out, okay? Just trust me on this. Take them out. Other things that people don't think about taking out are Kleenex boxes. I don't know what's up with all the Kleenex boxes. I know it's allergy season, but get it out of there. And of course they don't even have the Kleenex box in a pretty little container. They have the floral design that's really loud and they're all over the house and just not a good look, okay? So get rid of your Kleenex boxes. Another pet peeve of mine is the paper towel holder. You know, some of you like to display that out in the counter. No, it just doesn't look good. It just doesn't look good. Like hide it in a cabinet. I know I'm being super weird, but we wanna make sure people feel like they're not intruding on somebody's territory. Yes, again, I know they are, but we're trying to have them just enjoy visualizing themselves there. And we don't want all this distracting stuff out. I know you probably don't think it matters. I notice it. So do your buyers. This is another like thing that drives me nuts is a lot of you have old window treatments, like the little lever, the louveliers, I think is what they're called. And then they have the roller shades that are broken or the plantation shutters. Okay, I know you guys are gonna hate me saying this, but I hate plantation shutters. I hate them. There's my laugh again. Probably get another voicemail. They block the light. Okay, now I'm not gonna lie. I do have a few plantation shutters in my house. I wish I never would have put them in, but a lot of you have those plantation shutters where the little panels or panes are not attached properly, so they don't always move. You put shutters on your windows, it darkens them. So if your plantation shutters are shot, get rid of them. I know it's hard because they're so expensive, but they're not trending right now. I know it's hard to hear. If your roller shades are not working, get rid of them. Just get rid of them. And if your louveliers aren't working and they're dirty and they're grimy, just get rid of them. I would rather have a bare window than have things that are not functioning properly or that they're blocking light. Okay, did you hear me on that? Your buyers can always buy their own window treatments. Now, a lot of you are like, well, I've got to live in my house, Audra, and I don't know about that. Okay, well, I'm telling you, if you want to sell your house, you do the right steps. And you want a lot of light in your house, you don't want to darken it. And for those of you that love draperies, the really heavy ones that are back in the Tuscan era and you spend a lot of money, I would say remove it. You don't want heavy, dark, drab anything in your house. If they're expensive, then you can always take them down, wrap them up, and just tell the buyer that, hey, we do have window treatments that we have stored in the garage. You're welcome to put them up. But my realtor told me to take them down. That's a better mistake than leaving the darker, drab, heavy curtains. Now, with that said, okay, I have velvet curtains in my house. I love them. They look great. Would I remove them? Probably not. But you guys know the ones that aren't. It's the ones with the patterns that are super heavy that have been there with the gold tassels. And that's just not trending right now. And if you don't know what's trending, let's revert back to going to Pinterest, going to Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn and looking at their drapery selections. You don't need to buy them. You just need to know what's trending. If yours are not trending, get rid of them, pack them, remove them. Better to have nothing on the window than dated draperies or window treatments. Things should work on your property when selling, okay? If you have structural or electrical or mechanical things that aren't working on your property, you should have those corrected before you put your house on the market. So if you have a major foundation issue, you need to fix it, right? If you have your oven that just went out, you should probably fix it or replace it, even do a refurbished model. Things should work on your house. The water heater should be working, right? The microwave that just took a digger, you should replace, okay? And none of this, I hate this. This is the thing I hate the most when I hear this from my sellers. And they're like, oh, I'll just give the buyer a credit. Okay, your buyer doesn't want a credit, okay? And if they're doing a home inspection and they find all these things that are wrong, they're gonna wonder, hey, what other things are wrong with this house? You want to present your house in its best light. Once again, I will link down below, home staging checklist and also things that come up on a home inspection report. You wanna have as clean a report as possible on your home. Of course, you want your CO detectors and your smoke detectors in place. Every state has their own regulations. You want to work with your realtor to make sure that you have your home up to code. A few other quick little tips, find out and remember when trash day is. You don't wanna take photos on trash day. And if your buyer says, hey, I have a few days, I wanna see your house, just try to avoid showing the house on a trash day. We also wanna make sure the curb appeal is beautiful. I can't tell you how many times I've been in an open house and the cars pull up, they look at the house, they drive right away. They won't even go in because they don't like what they see. So I highly suggest that you pay attention to that curb appeal. Your grass should be green if you have grass. I highly recommend that you put mulch in your yard and we're not gonna use red mulch and we're not gonna do some wacky lava rock thing. We're gonna do just a standard brown, neutral, good smelling mulch, okay? The trees and the plants on your property should be thriving. There shouldn't be any dead anything on your property. If you have those palm trees, they shouldn't have any of these weird dead prawns, like you wanna cut those down, right? And your trees should be trimmed away from the roof line. That will come up in a home inspection report. So you're gonna tidy your yard, it's gonna look beautiful. And when they take those pictures, you're gonna find that buyer who's gonna fall in love with your home online before they even get to the front door. Let's not forget, let's take those spiderwebs down too. Also, when you're taking pictures or when you're having showings, you wanna make sure your cars are off the driveway, right? And if you have neighbors or junky cars that are sitting out front, because maybe the neighbor's teenage kid parked the car in front of your house, I would just go knock on the door and tell them to move. As a listing agent, I always do that for my clients. If there's some cars parked out front, I just make sure that when that buyer shows up, that they have a full, wonderful viewing of how beautiful the home is because you went to a lot of work to present it in its best light. Final tip is you need to hire a realtor. Yes, you do, who's gonna commit to providing high-end quality photos and images. I can't express how important that is, okay? You're doing all the stuff I just said in this video because you wanna attract that buyer. And the only way you're gonna attract that buyer is to make sure your house shines online with those high-quality photos, video, media. So when you're interviewing those agents, you need to make sure you ask them if they're gonna provide high-quality images. It's super important. If you don't do that and your photos don't shine online, you're not gonna get the attention. And it's attention that is probably well due because you have put so much time and energy in presenting your home in its best light. All right, don't forget, down below is a link with the checklist for the staging and also the home inspection. There's a lot more things on those checklists than what I covered in this video. But of course, you're gonna appreciate all the effort I went to. And so you're gonna subscribe to my channel and smash that like button. Appreciate you watching and supporting my channel. I'll see you in the next one.