Top 3 Tips for Selling Your Home in the Spring Real Estate Market
Are you thinking about selling home sweet home in the springtime? You’re not alone. The spring real estate market is the most popular time to list properties for sale.
If you’re selling your home during this time, you may think it’s a slam dunk, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. While it may be true that there are more homebuyers out during the springtime, there are also more home sellers. You really have to bring your a-game if you want your home to sell. Simply listing it isn’t good enough. It’s not unheard of for a home to fail to sell during springtime. But don’t despair. There are things you can do to improve your home’s chances of selling.
Here are my top 3 tips for selling your home in the spring real estate market.
Tip #1: Boost Your Home’s Curb Appeal
Impressions matter a lot – at job interviews, on first dates and especially when you’re selling your home. In order for someone to be interested enough to make an offer on your property, they need to be able to picture themselves there. That’s hard to do if your front yard looks like an eyesore.
Spring tends to be a messy season. When the snow melts, it reveals ugly sights. Everything from piles of garbage to cigarette butts. Be sure to spend an hour or two to clean up to make sure your home is looking its best.
Likewise, your front garden may be a little worse for wear after the winter. You can fix that by adding a little greenery and flowers. Nothing says welcome to the neighbourhood more than newly-planted flowers in the front garden!
You’ll also want to do basic home maintenance like cleaning your gutters and mowing your lawn.
Tip #2: Price Your Home Right
There’s an old saying in real estate among agents. The only thing that’s worse than having no listing is an overpriced listing.
When you’re putting your home on the market, it’s easy to list it for the highest price in your neighbourhood. While that may be justified, be careful not to have tunnel vision. While your home may be spacious, newly-renovated and come with plenty of amenities, it’s important not to ignore what’s going on in real estate market.
Although springtime tends to be when most of the homebuyers are out, when you overprice your home, although you may get plenty of foot traffic, you might get few or no offers. Don’t shoot for the moon. By listening to the advice of your realtor and comparing your property to the other properties out there, you can come up with a listing price that will attract plenty of offers, not one that will turn away potential buyers.
Tip #3: Renovate Smart
Should I renovate the kitchen and bathroom? It’s a dilemma faced by many sellers. While it may seem like a no brainer for some, the reality is that you’ll rarely recoup the costs of home renovations when you resell your home. In fact, in most cases you’ll lose money. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t renovate your home. You should just do it in a smart, cost effective way.
If your kitchen is a little worse for wear, instead of renovating it top to bottom, have you ever considered refacing your kitchen cabinets? If you’re handy around the house, it’s the perfect DIY home renovation and tends to get a great ROI.
Likewise, your bathroom may need a total gut job. Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars to renovate it, you can spruce it up a bit yourself. For example, I installed a nice medicine cabinet I bought for less than $100 and it made my bathroom look like a million bucks.
Written by Sean Cooper
Sean Cooper is the bestselling author of the book, Burn Your Mortgage: The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians. He bought his first house when he was only 27 in Toronto and paid off his mortgage in just 3 years by age 30. Sean’s helping others with their mortgages as an independent mortgage broker. Get in touch with him for all your mortgage needs. For a free mortgage consultation, email Sean@BurnYourMortgage.ca or call 647–867–3711.
