Is Your Home for Sale? Tips for having your home for sale in the Fall & Winter months

As if it isn’t hard enough to sell a home in a slower market, you have to work extra hard in the colder months to get interest and keep your home presentable and attractive. Here are some tips.

1. Keep the walkways clear. Whether it is fallen leaves, or snow and ice – you must make sure the walkway is safe and clear. You don’t want the buyers to be annoyed with your house before they even enter! Don’t forget about the back deck too.
2. Keep it warm and toasty inside. If you are like me, you keep the temperature just warm enough to be bearable just to keep the gas bill down. But before a showing on your home, turn up that thermostat! It’s all about creating comfort. This is a place where they could live and be comfortable, right? And you don’t want them to even begin to worry about the condition of your insulation or your furnace. You want them to be busy falling in love with your home!
3. Decorate! But not too much. Fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever you may be celebrating generally has some great decorations associated with it. Don’t go overboard, but use the decorations to dress up a room, or to add some good curb appeal.
4. No Tacky Yard Art. No plastic Santa Clauses on the roof please. Also, it probably isn’t the best idea to put out your glowing nativity scene either.
5. Clean up the leaves. The trees are shedding their leaves all over our lawns and houses this time of year. Make sure to clean them up and keep that yard and landscaping looking tidy. Also, be sure to clean the leaves and debris out your gutters.
6. Don’t take your house off the market for days at a time. Many times sellers will have holiday gatherings at their home and host overnight guests. Generally they will instruct their Realtor to decline showings during this time. I never got this. Plan ahead – your house is for sale so you should have the holiday parties somewhere else. Not only could you miss out on potential buyers during this time – you’ll probably also need a couple days afterwards to clean up after everybody so you’ll have even more time without showings. Some people tend to think that no buyers will be looking at homes on the holidays, but this is not true! Many buyers are looking on the holidays because that is when they can get off of work (especially those relocating).
7. No political signs. This is true year-round actually, but especially for presidential elections. Never put out election or political signs, national or local, because they can definitely offend and turn-off buyers. I know it’s crazy, but it is true.