Breaking Up With Your House (When Listing It For Sale)

Hi friends!

Hope you all enjoyed the weekend - it was glorious here in northern Kentucky. It finally felt like spring!

Today I want to have a heart to heart about break ups. Not a Dr. Phil kind of break up, but breaking up with your house when you have decided it is time to sell. I've read many blogs and watched equally as many vlogs where the author laments their realtor's suggestion to undecorate and depersonalize the home they wish to sell. I hear them say over and over, "it won't feel like my home" or "we still have to live there." 

Folks, you really need to break up with your house and start thinking of the sale as a business transaction (which it is) and not your home. If you want top dollar and a faster sale, you really need to do this even though it may be hard to do. In today's market, many will tell you it is not necessary to do anything to your house and you will still find a buyer if it's priced fairly. This is very true, but if you want the most you can get for your house, you would be wise to break up with and make it appealing to as many prospective buyers.

We sold our house of 20 years last year and we took this advice. I firmly believe we got far more than if we had left it "feeling like home" when listing. We decluttered and cleaned  everything. We sorted through every closet, drawer, cabinet, etc. We made countless trips to goodwill,  had two rummage sales, and disposed of endless bags of trash.

Once that was done, we painted whatever needing touching up or a new paint job. We filled every nail hole, spray painted our chipped and rusty floor registers black to freshen them up. We replaced some of our outlet/switch plate covers that looked tired - in other words we just gave our house the TLC it needed. It was more elbow grease and time than money spent. 

Now let's go on a journey through our listing photos and I can tell you what we did to prepare our house for sale.

First, on the outside you will see the white and black wood & iron piece above the door. Before listing, it was a cute sign with our name on it, our city and state and the year we built the house.  Obviously this was a very personal item and would have turned potential buyers off right at the front door. We weren't planning on taking it to our new home, so we spray painted over it and attached a metal embellishment from Hobby Lobby. Cost - under $20! 

 In our kitchen, we packed away most of our decor and stayed with a basic green, white and cream color scheme. I added some faux red and yellow peppers to a green cake stand for a pop of color for the centerpiece. It really helped bring a punch to the picture. When it was still decorated as our "home," I had lots more decor on the walls and flat surfaces. 

The work area of our kitchen was the biggest decor removal undertaking! Normally, the tops of our cabinets were jam packed with decor, the counters had decor and a coffee maker. We eliminated all of that and even had a few empty cabinets to make it look more spacious. The clear counters made the work area look so big!

The living room was also scaled back to a bare minimum. The only wall art was a single picture above the fireplace, flanked by two lanterns.  A few Burgundy pillows and a throw helped to move your eye around the room and added some warmth.We got rid of (or stored) several pieces of smaller furniture to help the room feel bigger. 

You can see the Burgundy throw helps to draw the eye into the living room.

The minimal decor, as well as no window treatments, really helped make the rooms seem larger.

Our upstairs "nook" and stairway were still pretty heavily decorated and very farmhouse specific. It looks so cute to me, but if I had a do over I would definitely neutralize it a bit when listing.

Our third bedroom was actually our workout room. We did do quite a few changes in here. We replaced 20 year old carpet with very inexpensive LVP. We also painted over the very dark gray (almost black) ceiling and repainted the dingy white walls with a creamy white we had on hand. We lightened and brightened the paint because the dark ceiling was very specific and we felt would not appeal to most buyers. I bought a $10 valance from Amazon to add a touch of pattern to the room. The valance has a hint of gold and ties into the color scheme of our other bedroom (see next picture). The faux brick wall treatment was the only wall art. I gathered all of my small houseplants and put them on a little stand in the corner to bring in some life to a room that might otherwise feel cold. A picture flaw is one of the decorative lights is not on. A small detail, but it does detract from the picture quality. Your listing pictures are what potential buyers see first, so attention to detail is very important.

Our second bedroom had been painted just a year earlier, so no painting was necessary except for the closet (which still had its original 2001 paint!). We also put in  the same LVP as we did in the work out room. I spent a few dollars on linens for this room to replace what I had. I had a very primitive quilt and shams on the bed. I loved it, but again, I wanted to appeal to as many buyers as possible. I bought a $15 white comforter, two white Euro shams for $22, 4 buffalo plaid pillow covers for $13 and a clearance Rae Dunn lumbar in gold for $7. The primarily white bedding just gave the room such a clean and fresh look. I also felt the crisp white would appeal to millennial buyers, most likely a large block of prospective buyers.

The laundry room cabinets and walls needed a fresh coat of paint, so we took the time to do that. I also used a blue vase, red area rug and a colorful Pioneer Woman sponge on a plate to again, pop a small bit of color in an essentially neutral space. All items we already owned.

Our home office was decluttered. We removed an easy chair & ottoman, a curio cabinet and another small table and chair. My only regret is not removing our Roomba for pictures. This rooms looks huge, despite it's actual small size.

Our master bedroom also had lots of clutter and smaller pieces of furniture. We removed an easy chair. We also swapped out two small green tables for our nightstands because they were too big for the space. The smaller tables look so much better! I also bought another cheap white comforter for this room. The plaid green throw, green pillow and green chenille shams I had purchased for our new hone, so staging cost us nothing in that room - except $20 for the comforter. This set even came with matching white shams.  I put a tray with a book, tea pot and cup on the throw to "sell" the lifestyle.

Our master bathroom actually has some staging "mistakes." The towel hanging from the hook looked cute in person, but just looks messy in the photo. The toilet paper is in a cute copper bucket, but if I could do it over, I would have stored it away in a cabinet. I would also remove the wreath. This is my least favorite listing picture, which is disappointing because this was a very sweet, little master bath.

The other side of our bathroom has a big oops - in the linen closet, on the right shelf, you can see my bottle of Mrs. Meyer's fabric softener. I know it's not a big deal, but it does take away from the picture. Remember, you aren't staging for reality, you trying to sell a luxury lifestyle (in whatever price level your home is in)!

We spent very little on sprucing up our home to get ready to list - perhaps $500 for accessories, repairs such as outlet/switch plate covers and paint. The LVP flooring in the two bedrooms was a project planned before we decided to sell so I'm not counting those. They were $1800 total for both rooms and were professionally installed. Even if you were to include the floors, the amount spent was minimal. We also spent $450 to have an independent home inspection prior to listing to avoid any surprises during the selling process. We were able to fix the few minor things they found and also had the peace of mind that our house was in good shape.

You could easily stage your home for sale using what you already own. You could borrow items from a friend as well. A gallon or two of paint possibly and you are on your way to selling your house for top dollar! One really impactful staging trick I did cost me nothing - I organized my closet and my husbands closet by color. It was a game changer! Our closets looked fantastic. If you are looking to update your hangers, this would be a good time to do it. I actually had enough white hangers for my closet and green hangers for my husbands' closet. Totally unnecessary to have the same color hangers, but it did give an upscale look for zero dollars. I would not have had enough hangers in the same color, but we packed away 3/4 of our clothes and put them in storage boxes. The random purple, orange, blue hangers got packed away and I scrounged enough white and green to "stage."  I will say again, it's the details that get you the bigger payoff in the end!

 I highly recommend putting in the time to make your home as appealing to as many buyers as you can. I also recommend cleaning, purging and packing up most of your belongings as well.  All your "stuff" makes it hard for a potential buyer to visualize living in your house. Family pictures, collections, extra furnishings and the like all make your house feel like home to you. But remember, you aren't selling your home, you are selling your house and you want to attract as many buyers as possible. Wrap those treasures up and look forward to displaying them again in your next house.  Our efforts, I believe, resulted in a great payoff when we sold our house. We had about 30 showings and 14 offers - all above asking. We sold for nearly $50,000 over list price. Would it have sold had we not put the effort to clean, purge and style? Absolutely. Would we have gotten the price we did if we had not broken up with our house and kept it looking like our home? There is no way of knowing, but I doubt we would have. For us, the time we put into putting our best foot forward when presenting our house for sale was worth the time and attention. An extra bonus - the decluttering/purging/packing process helped us with a jump start on being ready for moving day.

How about you? Have you sold your house in this crazy market we have been in? I'd love it if you would share your experience!

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