Sell Your Home With These Quick, Cheap Fixes
To say the current real estate market is slow is a major understatement. From the credit crunch to the mass of foreclosures, things are pretty grim. If you need to sell your home, these inexpensive suggestions can make a difference.
Smoking is not only bad for your health, it can turn off potential home buyers. If you or someone living in your home smokes, you need to deal with it. Clean the walls, floors and remove butts outside. Also replace the air filter in the heater.
Sellers are taught to inspect faucets. Leaks are a sign of a home not maintained properly. Fortunately, fixing them is simple. Buy new washers from the local home improvement store and redo all the faucets in your home.
Certain parts of a home tell a potential buyer all they need to know about how you took care of the home while living there. The baseboards are one such area. Make sure yours are in perfect shape with no dings, scratches or marks.
Walls are a flat single color surface. This makes them a natural target and they get beat up over the years. If yours are dinged up, fix them. Cracks should be repaired. Make sure the paint blends naturally with the rest of the wall.
It always amazes me when people spend big dollars on beautiful doors and windows, but then go cheap on screens. Screens are cheap and easy to replace. If yours are beaten up, bent, have holes or rusty, change them out.
First impressions count. Give your front door the evil eye to see if it measures up. If it is a bit plain, consider painting it. If you are going to spend some money, a new front door is the place to do it.
There is one repair you can make that costs practically nothing. Landscaping. Trim back the jungle. Do some weeding. Consider buying some new plants. If you have a dull area of the yard or home, spruce them up with landscaping.
Neither buyers nor sellers know much about roofs. Still, both know that broken shingles are bad news. If you have them, get the fixed. In fact, pay a roofer a small fee to have the entire roof inspected.
Although the current real estate market is slow, it is not dead. There are buyers. Homes are selling. The key is to moving your home is in the details. Buyers have lots to choose from so don’t give them a reason to walk away from yours.
