When your house goes up on the market, you need to be prepared to let buyers walk through at any moment—especially in this market. As a seller, you usually have just a several-day window before potential buyers start making offers. Your home has to look perfect at the drop of a hat.
If you can, it’s often easiest to spend that week somewhere else. Stay with family, or move into a friend’s place for a few days. But if that’s not an option and you need to live in the home during this stressful time, here’s a list of last-minute preparations before an interested buyer walks through the front door:
- Put the toilet seats down.
- Remove toiletries and personal items from the bathroom. It’ll be easiest if you can live out of dopp kit for a few days, rather than try to move all your makeup, skin care products, and hair products each time.
- Wipe down all the counters.
- If there are dishes in the sink, put them in the dishwasher so they’ll be out of sight.
- Empty the indoor garbage, recycling, and compost bins.
- Make the beds and fluff the pillows.
- Pick up any toys or clutter like magazines, keys, and jackets. If you hide them out of sight, the buyers can more easily visualize themselves living there without visual reminders that it’s very much someone else’s home at the moment.
WAY too much clutter!
- Close all closet doors.
- Keep up with cleaning. Vacuum and sweep every day, so you can make yourself scarce at a moment’s notice and the house will still look well-cared for.
- If you truly don’t have time for the last-minute details, it’s not the end of the world! Still schedule showings, but let the agent know that the house won’t be spotless.
These are last-minute tasks that you should do before every showing—but don’t sweat the big things. We’ll help you get your home ready for the market by orchestrating a deep clean, decluttering, sprucing up the yard, washing windows, and making repairs and updates. Is all this prep work normal for real estate agents? Definitely not. But that’s what sets us apart: we do more.
