Selling your own home – How much work?
Selling your own home can be a stress.
selling your own homeHaving just sold my home at Auction for a record price for the area it was brought home to me how important it is to really finish off your home for sale.
If you’re considering selling your own home in the future you’ve got to make sure you market it to the right buyer!
When I was preparing my home I spent quite a bit of time simply walking around and trying to look at it through the eyes of a potential purchaser. In order to do that you have to think about who your most likely buyer will be.
Are you looking to sell to a first home buyer, a downsizer, a growing family, an investor….?
Different folks will have different needs and you need to think accordingly.
I decided that the most likely purchaser was someone like me, but the me of 10 years ago…
I had a child and one on the way. I wanted to be near transport, schools, have open space for the kids to play and be close to my family. Well guess what. In the end my purchaser was a lady with a young child at the local school who wanted to stray in the area to be close to family and loved the space and convenience.
This was not a shock to me; she loved the same things about the home that I loved 10 years ago when I bought for the very same reasons. Another thing she said that stuck in my mind, she wanted something with “no work to be done”. Think about that. How many buyers do you think are looking for a family home with ‘no work for them to do’? Probably half.
This made me glad that I’d taken the time to go the extra mile to fix up every possible problem and remove as many objections as possible.
Where to stop when selling your own home?
What if you’d done ‘most’ of the things that needed doing. What if you’d tidied the yard, painted the living room, put new carpet in, but had left the old wallpaper in the dining room.
It might be enough to put that 1 buyer off. That’s what I had done. I needed to finish the job.
If just one buyer is put off your home it could make all the difference come sale time, Especially if you are setting up for auction like I Was. It came down to 2 serious bidders who had both fallen in love with the property. My job was to give them no reason to pull out, no reason to have a second thought. I had to cover off all the bases and remove ‘any indication of future work’
Did that mean I put in a ‘new’ kitchen? Did I put in a ‘new’ bathroom?
No I didn’t!
But I did fix up everything I could think of. All the things that had annoyed me and I’d put off over 10 years I spent time and effort on to get just right. I had shower screens fixed. If they couldn’t be fixed I’d replace them with new.
Why do so much when selling your own home?
I didn’t want to leave any room for doubt to creep in to a buyer’s mind. Now some buyers might want more that I had to offer. Some might have been wanting the ‘new’ kitchen and bathroom, rather than ‘just’ a freshly painted and clean and well-presented space. But I decided that to do justice to a ‘new’ renovation to these very important areas was going to be a huge investment on terms of both time and money for a limited potential return.
None of these places in my home were structurally unsound or particular offensive to the eye.
They simply needed to be refreshed and cared for.
My kitchen for example, was re-painted throughout. Splashbacks and cabinets were renewed, but not replaced. I was even able to renew my bench tops rather than replace because they were in such good condition. They ‘looked’ like new and there was no work to be done.
For a total outlay of something less than $200 I had what looked like a ‘new’ kitchen that made it easy for someone to walk in and say ‘yes’ I don’t have to do anything here!
That’s all you need to do. Take away the things that alarm any purchaser and you have gone a long way to stacking the odds in your favour come Auction day.
Until next time,
