How to sell a house.
Get a storage locker. Maybe a big one.
Move out half your stuff. Maybe more than half. If it's winter, store your summer clothes. If it's summer, store the winter ones.
All your tools and garage crap gets stored, unless you have a dedicated shop area.
Most of your kitchen stuff gets stored. Eat out a lot.
Fresh paint. Clean carpets. Dust everything.
Bogie, next time you move can I sell your house? It would be a nice change to have a seller that actually, well... thinks.
Brad
We're even one step past that. We don't think. We ask the realtor what needs to be done and then prioritize by cost. We get it done. Realtor says jump, we say how high......
So, last year we were looking at homes, when we bought our current shack. NoVA has higher than average home prices, especially if you want 4+ bedrooms and a fully finished basment. We were looking around $450-$500k about 2500-3000 sqft. Not cheap, right? You'd think then, that people would actually clean a house before showing it, not cook pugnant ethnic foods, or actually have basement finishing that at least looks code, right?
Wrong!
At least 2 homes we looked at were a mess. Now, I understand "lived in". Its hard to have kids and keep a house "show ready". But take out the damn trash. Cut the grass once a week. Empty out your GD garage.
One home we went in was owned by people from probably India. House was nice enough, but the smell of cooking (presumably curry) was stronger than even an Indian resturant! It was so bad my wife couldn't stand to be in it.
Then there was the death house. Priced at the top of the price range ($499k), it wasn't furnished with more than a dining table and a bed, even though someone was living there. The person living there was a woman, wheelchair bound, around 150 years old it appeared. And the place smelled like she'd died 2 years prior, but nobody had the heart to inform her of it. The carpet looked like it had been pieced together by children, as you could see all the seams. The neighbors had 4 cars on blocks. And there was grafitti on the back of the house.