Preparing Your Home For Sale

Whether you're ready to sell now or just curious about the process, we can help.  Many homeowners begin thinking about selling long before they are really ready to move!

The sale of property in IL involves legalities that even a For Sale By Owner must conform to.  We provide the following services in preparing your home for sale.

1. Provide a free, no obligation market evaluation for your property.
2. Provide an estimate of your cost of sale and your net equity based on your property.
3. Inform you of village ordinances which may apply to your property.
4. Explain Fair Housing Laws.
5. Provide you with a copy of the IL Seller Disclosure Act form.
6. Explain why offering a home warranty for your property may be in your best interest.
7. Help you decide if your property should be inspected by a certified home inspection service.
8. Locate your real estate property index number.
9. Help you determine which repairs are necessary and which are not.

Even though you still need to live in your home while it is on the market you might need to make certain sacrifices to convert your home into more of a showplace. Before we take professional photos of your home and begin to conduct showings you will want to remove all excess "stuff". Closets that are completely filled send a message to potential buyers that the closets are too small, while rooms that are packed with furniture and tchotchkes hide the finer features of the home. Even an abundance of personal photos on mantles and shelves can be a distraction. Now is a great time to get rid of all those unnecessary things you accumulated - things you no longer want or need. You can even bring in a little extra cash at the same time. 

A garage sale is not hard to prepare for and can be fun!  Enlist the help of the whole family in organizing and pricing your merchandise.  Perhaps you could arrange a joint sale with a few neighbors.  Advertise the sale in your local paper and with signs placed around the neighborhood.  Be prepared to bargain and drop prices, if necessary, to clear out your inventory.  Make arrangements with a local charity to collect all the leftover items after the sale.

Another trick, if you can't bear to depart with Uncle Joe's moose head, is to rent storage space for all those items you plan on taking to your next home but don't need on a day-to-day basis.

In addition to decluttering there are other elements of staging that you should consider. Some homeowners even enlist the help of a professional in order to squeeze out every last dime of value from their home. Although you may not feel like doing everything on the list below, we wanted to give you an idea of just how many tools are at your disposal:

1. Define the space. In other words, the furniture should match the intended use of the room. Having a desk in the dining room makes it difficult for potential buyers to see the potential of the room as a dining room.
2. Use neutral colors.
3. Right sized furniture. Furniture should be neither too big or too small for the space.
4. Upscale furniture. Some people even pay to rent different furniture for their home during the listing period. The nicer the furniture is, the better the home looks.
5. Rearrange existing furniture to highlight the positive attributes of the rooms and to downplay the negatives.
6. Cover worn furniture with tasteful throws.
7. Deodorize. Pet odors can be a real turn off for buyers. Sometimes you need to call in professionals to clean carpets or remove odors.
8. Clean windows and remove screens.
9. Thoroughly clean kitchens and bathrooms. Grout should be completely free of mold and mildew. All seams should be calked.
10. Clean up the landscape, removing weeds and trash.
11. Open blinds and turn on all the lights.
12. Replace or fix broken fixtures.
13. Replace burned out light bulbs
14. Face the food in the pantry. Just like in the grocery store, you can arrange the cans and boxes in your pantries and cabinets so that they are neatly lined up.
15. Remove pet and childrens' paraphernalia.
16. Display fresh cut flowers.

You can improve the appeal of your home by adding on a few extras such as a pre-sale home inspection and a home warranty. A home inspection could give a buyer that little bit of extra comfort needed to get them to put a bid on your home and home inspectors will often provide a discount (up to 50%) to a buyer who uses the same inspector used by the seller in a pre-sale inspection. Similarly, a home warranty extends that comfort beyond the initial purchase to the entire first year of ownership and often the seller can get free coverage during the listing period.