Selling a Home

If you're thinking about selling your home, you can help improve your chances of selling it as quickly as possible for the most amount of money possible if you take some time to prepare your home for prospective buyers. This showcases your home in a positive light and lets it make a good impression on buyers.

Our REALTORS® suggest the following ways to prep your home before selling it:

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If your home has a dedicated dining room, chances are you don't use it very much. And if you're selling your home, prospective buyers are likely to see it as wasted space that they also won't spend much time in. However, your dining room represents a good opportunity to stage the area and create a room that will wow your buyers.

Our REALTORS® recommend the following ways to stage your dining room and set your home apart from other Midland homes for sale.

• A home office
  An empty dining room can be transformed into an office space, even though it may not have a door. This can be a plus since prospective buyers who work at home won't feel closed off or isolated. If they have kids, they can easily keep an ear out for them. Try leaving the middle of the room open, so it's easy to walk through and doesn't feel cramped. Add some seating and put a narrow, tall, wall-mounted bookcase to work for displays and storage since it doesn't take up much floor space.
• A family hangout spot 
  Turn a formal area into a casual one by transforming your dining room into a space for family to gather. Mount a flat-screen TV on one wall and move in a comfortable couch. Finally, add some wall storage units for storing Blu-rays and DVDs and display some cherished objects. Ultimately, you've created a room that will appeal to buyers who can picture themselves and their family happily hanging out in the space.
• A library
  Why not create a library in your home? Your potential buyers could have the convenience of having all of their books neatly organized in one room that's a cozy spot to read in. Add floor-to-ceiling bookcases to store your books — along with a small ladder if needed to reach the top shelves. Then make the room even more comfortable with several chairs, throws, and a large rug to soften the room's look.
• A playroom for the kids
  Your dining room can be staged to be a playroom for kids by adding a table for art projects or homework, a chalkboard, and other items. Add some toy storage boxes and bins as well as cubbies for storing shoes and backpacks, and you'll make your home extremely appealing to prospective buyers with kids.
• A fitness room
  With everyone spending more time at home, a home fitness room will be a definite selling point. Put a foam mat over the flooring and bring in free weights and other equipment such as an exercise bike, and you'll easily transform your dining room into an at-home fitness room.
• A guest bedroom
  If your home doesn't have a guest bedroom, create one by using a bed with built-in nightstands to create a minimal look. A dresser can make up for the lack of a closet, and if your dining room doesn't have doors, hang curtains for privacy or have French doors installed.

Contact Ayre/Rhinehart REALTORS® to learn more about making your home appeal to prospective buyers. With some relatively small changes, you can transform an underutilized space like a dining room into an area that buyers will love. 

Our REALTORS® know a home tour is one of the most important parts of getting to closing day for most Midland homes for sale. Whether in person or virtual, eagle-eyed buyers will be on the lookout for any issues. It's crucial that your home look its best!

Before any tour, it's vital to stage your home. Staging helps ensure the most attractive qualities of the property are noticed right away. By organizing, tidying, and setting up each room "just so," you can ensure a buyer's attention goes where you want it.

Of course, it's not all bad news. Buyers also zero in on the home features that matter most to them.

So, what can you expect diligent buyers to notice right away when touring your home?

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Selling your home comes with many tasks, chores, and steps that all go toward closing. Most of these things are meant to make your home appealing to buyers and get that offer. But selling a home is more than just accepting an offer. After showing buyers how good your home looks, you need to convince them that it's in a state worth buying. This is where a home inspection comes in. A home inspection is often a deciding factor for the majority of home buyers, so you want to make sure it goes well. Here are our REALTORS® home inspection tips for sellers.

• Rely on the Expertise of Your Real Estate Agent
  In addition to marketing the house, your listing agent should also help you improve your home to make it more appealing. Your agent will know what the inspector will be looking for and will be alert for issues that you may miss, such as insect and mold issues, furnace issues, roofing problems, leaks, or structural problems. They will also know how best to approach them. Real estate agents also have superior negotiation skills. When the inspection report arrives, they will know what constitutes grounds for negotiations and what does not. It's your agent's job to see to it that you get the best possible deal.

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You can't control all the factors that influence the sale of your home. You can't change the location, and there is only so much you can do to improve the home's curb appeal. However, there is one ace up your sleeve that you have complete control over, and that is the listing price of the house. If you are finding it hard to sell your home, our REALTORS® may recommend reducing the price to entice an interested buyer to your front door.

• Aiming Too High Can Turn Away Buyers
  Everyone wants to receive a reasonable offer for their home. However, many sellers artificially raise the price of their home. They do this with the intent to negotiate down to the offer they want to receive. However, if the home is priced too high, it will turn away savvy buyers who will see the price is too high. If no one has called to take a look in a week or longer, it is a good bet the price is working against you.

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Virtual tours aren't new to the real estate industry but they're perhaps bigger — and more important — today than ever before. Virtual tours offer a number of benefits to both buyers and sellers. Buyers can conveniently take walk-throughs of properties all around the world, viewing as many spaces as they wish before committing to an in-person walk-through. Sellers, in turn, only receive qualified and motivated buyers at their doorstep and the decreased cleaning requirements also save them money in the long-run. If you're planning on listing your house alongside other Midland homes for sale, here are a few tips from our REALTORS® that will help you prep your home for a successful virtual tour.

• Begin With the Basics
  Your virtual tour preparation begins with the same basic open house preparation. You should create a checklist of all of the cleaning and maintenance tasks that you need to complete. Separate these by room so you can close each space off as you finish.

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Decluttering has been a big trend this year. And while you're browsing Midland homes for sale, you might be thinking that you should declutter before you move. These tips will help you through every step of the decluttering process so you can enter your new home and enjoy a completely fresh start.

Why Moving is the Perfect Time to Declutter

If you aren't using something, why go through the trouble of moving it to your new home? This is the biggest reason why moving is the perfect time to declutter. Plus, many moving companies charge by the box. This means that if you don't declutter, you'll end up paying to move things you can't even remember the last time you used.

Decluttering can also be advantageous when you're selling your current home. Our REALTORS® say that a cluttered house looks smaller. By getting the clutter out of the way, you can make your house look more open and inviting to potential buyers.

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If you're getting ready to put your home on the market in 2019, you'll be looking for ways to update it to wow potential buyers. A fresh coat of paint is a great place to start. Painting your home—inside and out—can have a huge impact on its overall appearance, and is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to make it stand out from the crowd of Midland homes for sale. So what do you need to know about painting your Midland home to sell in 2019?

Why Prioritize Paint?

A good paint job can help you as a seller make a quick and lucrative sale. It's a great—and very economical—way to give your home a fresh, bright, and modern appearance. Painting to sell is especially important if you have a home customized to suit your unique sense of style, adding bold accent walls, murals, or wallpaper, for example. While you may love these personalized touches, people have different tastes, so some potential buyers can be put off by them.

Light, bright, spacious, and neutral is the look you need to go for to appeal to the widest range of buyers. The goal is to allow most anyone to be able to visualize how they could furnish and decorate the space to their liking—without having to paint over colors that might clash with their preferred color scheme.

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As the weather gets warmer, it's time to pack up sweaters, coats, and boots in favor of shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. Your home is also ready to shake off winter and get a fresh new look for spring. Follow this handy checklist from our REALTORS® to have your home in Midland ready to wow the spring buyers.

1. Inspect the Roof
   April showers bring May flowers, but they can also bring mold and other interior problems if your home has a leaky roof. If you'd rather not climb a ladder, use binoculars to look for missing or damaged shingles. Contact a professional roofer to handle any necessary repairs.
   
   

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When your Midland home is up for sale, how do you make it stand out above all the others on the market? Staged homes have the potential to sell faster than non-staged homes and at the price you want.

Proper staging takes a bit of time, but it doesn't have to take a lot of money. Here are some great staging tips our REALTORS® have learned from successfully showing Midland homes for sale. 

• Clean and Declutter
  This might seem like a no-brainer, but it's worth emphasizing. Clutter and disarray make a home look smaller and not well maintained. Box up unnecessary items and put them in storage, then give the house a serious deep-cleaning. Hire a cleaning service if need be; it's worth the cost.
  
  

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