In most areas of the country, housing markets are still very sluggish, and it can be very difficult to sell your home quickly. However, some people are selling. What makes the difference? It isn't always just a lower price. There are several ways to increase the value of your home. These six tips in this article include a lot of cheap ideas that will improve the value of your home and help you to sell it faster.
Make Your Home Look Bigger
The first thing you can do, is remove excess household furniture. This is a suggestion that I got from my friend who is a real estate agent. My friend suggested that before you sell a home, you want make the home look bigger. The best way to do this is to get rid of half of the items that are currently in your home. You can rent a storage unit for less than $100 per month, and move all of your extra furniture, or unnecessary household items into a storage unit until you can sell your home. The real estate agent that suggested this to me said that this works, because when you have a lot in your home, actually make your home look smaller. By getting rid of unnecessary items, it makes your home look a lot bigger and more inviting to a potential buyer.
The next tip that you can use is to repaint the interior of your home. For a smaller home, you can generally buy the paint and repaint for less than $500. Investing $500 and two or three weekends into repainting your home, can improve its value by as much as 10%.
Make Your Home Look Nicer
The next thing that you want to do is to make sure to clean your carpets. Make the carpets look as nice as you can, and you may even want to consider changing them out. Carpets are not super expensive, and a new carpet can make a home much more appealing. If you don't want to spend the money to change your carpets, at least have them cleaned.
Tip number four is to try and add life to your home anyway you can. This might mean temporarily removing some of your window coverings so that you can allow more light into your home. It might also mean upgrading your light bulbs from 60 W to 100 W. Make sure that you replace any nonworking lights as part of this process. When homes have more light, they tend to sell faster. People just like bright lights and being able to see. This will make your home worth more, and it doesn't even cost you very much money.
The fifth tip is one that I learned flipping real estate books and magazines. A lot of the books that I read suggested that you go through and change out the doors, and the light fixtures. They said that this was one of the cheapest ways to upgrade your home. A lot of times the doors and light fixtures can make a home look 20 to 30 years older. The good news is that it doesn't cost more than a few hundred dollars to change all of the light fixtures, and generally, you can change all your doors out for less than $1,000. This is an especially good idea, if you have very dark doors, like the kind that were used during the 1970's and 1980's.
Make Your Home As Clean As Possible
The six and last tip is to make sure that your house gets a deep cleaning. Make sure that you clean the windows so that you can have more light in your home, also make sure that you do a good job cleaning your bathroom and your kitchen. Especially, make sure to clean out your grout lines, and while you're at it, you may consider applying a grout sealer as well. This will keep your grout lines from getting dirty for at least six months. Having a clean home is a great way to give a buyer a good first impression. Usually, it is the first impression that sticks in the minds of a buyer. Having a good first impression will do a lot to help you sell your home quickly.
When getting divorced you want to maintain as much money as possible, so making your home worth more can mean more in each of your pockets.
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