How to Sell Your House When It’s Jam-Packed with Junk
Between the collectibles or keepsakes, treasures from your travels, garage sale finds or those 15,000 pieces of junk mail you’ll receive in a lifetime, you no longer know for certain who is in charge—you or your stuff.
You’re not alone.
Americans spend $1.2 trillion every year on items they don’t need, while 1 in every 11 U.S. households rents offsite storage for their overflowing number of belongings.
But now that you are ready to sell your home, all your junk (no offense to your beer koozie collection) stands in the way of your ultimate goal: to sell your home quickly and painlessly for a big pile of cash.
“It’s a buyers’ intuition,” says Jeff Galindo, a top-selling real estate agent in Las Vegas. “It’s seeing a house and thinking, ‘Geez, if this is the way they take care of their living space, how have they taken care of the home over time? Have they replaced the air filters and have they done proper maintenance and repair? It causes them to doubt the overall quality or condition of the home.”
Whether you want to sell, donate, store or hide your junk, we have tips from the pros on how to sell a house full of stuff so you’re not giving buyers that detrimental Hoarders: Buried Alive vibe.
Pare down before your listing photo shoot—buyers will make their first judgments online
In the ‘80s, homebuyers scanned newspaper listings or relied on word of mouth to find homes.
But the internet has fundamentally changed that. Now, online home search is universal across generations—99% of millennials use the web in their home hunt, along with 89% of older boomers and 77% of the Silent Generation. What’s more, 51% of today’s buyers find the home they end up purchasing online, compared to 30% who find their house through an agent, and 7% by seeing an old-fashioned yard sign.
“The internet is our most important resource,” Galindo says. “That’s where people are getting their first look at homes. People have a short attention span when they are looking at an app. It’s like swiping right or left on a home. They scroll through and say, ‘I like that one, I don’t like that one.’ That initial rejection is what we are trying to avoid by properly staging a home.”
That means a cluttered mess could not only turn off buyers who come through the home but hinder your ability to book showings in the first place. The house needs to be in shipshape before the photographer comes in with a DSLR and tripod to capture your home at its best, or online shoppers will simply say “Next!” to your web listing photos.
When it comes to clearing out the house, the sooner you can start, the better. So plan your timetable around photo day, rather than your market debut.
Next week, we will talk about how to donate your stuff prior to putting your house on the market.
See more at…https://www.homelight.com/blog/how-to-sell-a-house-full-of-stuff/