How to Prepare Your Seattle Home for Sale (Sell Faster & For More Money)

Now that you've decided to put your Seattle area home on the market and the overwhelm is setting in, you're probably asking yourself, where do I start? Well here's a few guidelines to follow to get your home sold faster and for more money. My name is Emily Cressey with HomeProAssociates.com and I grew up here in Lake Forest Park. I have been involved in millions of dollars of real estate transactions as a broker and as an investor myself. And if you're feeling overwhelmed about the idea of selling your home, I totally get it and I have found that by having a plan you can follow, you can better prepare your home for those house hunters that are desperate to find a home and are willing to pay top dollar. The first thing you need to do is free and it is so important. You need to declutter and deep clean your home. Now I know this can be a long process so it's smart to plan ahead and start earlier. I'm happy to walk through the home even you know months before you're ready to go and kind of help you think through this process. Obviously you have to pack anyway if you're moving out of the home so you might as well start by putting away the things you won't need for a few months and open up your space so it feels like there's a sense of an abundance of space rather than feeling cramped in as we get more and more furniture and things stored in there, right? A quarter home versus vacant home. Next you want to make sure that your home is sparkling clean so it photographs like a model home on Pinterest or Instagram. So if you're not a great cleaner yourself it may make sense to have a professional cleaner come through right before the house goes on the market. So fingers crossed you'll only have to keep it that clean for a week or two until it sells. Next I want you to go through that honey-do list that your spouse or you may have created over the last months and years and make sure that you finish any little projects around the house that you haven't taken care of yet. This could be something like cleaning out the gutters, fixing a closet door that kind of sticks, dripping faucets, you might want to wash the windows so the view looks great, spruce up the yard, make sure that any structural or mechanical items are in good working order and you might want to have a professional service for your furnace and your water heater to make sure that those are working well. Now let's talk about repairs. If your home has not had a fresh coat of paint in the time that you've lived there, that may be something that you want to consider especially if you have kids or you have pets or you have gotten your home very colorful over time. I was recently touring a home that was gorgeous. It had red, it had purple, it had orange, it had yellow, it had blue. I loved it. It was very, someone told me it was called a dopamine decor, like whoo it's fun to be in there. For the purposes of selling a home that kind of thing doesn't photograph well and it sort of limits the buyer pool. Although you may really like that purple kitchen, it may make your home look too dark or just off beat and funky rather than a blank slate that someone else can create their own design and style imprint on. Now thinking about the homebuyer process, I want you to think about creating a great first impression for when they first arrive at their home. They're looking around the street, maybe it's dark, maybe it's rainy, they're finding your house. Oh what do they see when they first get there? There's their real estate sign. How does the house look? This is what we call curb appeal and to learn more about this and for more practical steps, you need to think about what is happening the minute they drive up. Think about that exterior and take a look at my next video about how to create curb appeal for your home. Now if you'd like more information, you can always visit me online at HomeProAssociates.com and make sure you subscribe to the channel.