The Top 3 Things You Can Do To Sell Your House Faster According To HGTV's Unsellable Houses
When putting a house on the market, almost no one expects the property to take longer than usual to find a new owner. The average home in the United States takes one to three months to sell after being listed by its owner or an agent. However, some houses don't sell as fast because of their location, the condition of the housing market, and the overall physical state of the house in question. The last factor is important, as properties that seem outdated or in need of a lot of work may sit on the market longer than properties that aren't only move-in ready but require little to no maintenance to meet the buyer's needs. Luckily, sellers can make their homes appear more attractive to interested buyers by repainting their interior walls, removing personal decorative items, and staging in a way that highlights the qualities of each room.
Twin brokers Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis of Lamb & Co. and HGTV's "Unsellable Houses" help sellers around the Seattle metro area update their lackluster homes to get them off the market as quickly as possible. While the duo sometimes goes to great lengths to transform the properties they work on in the show, they also give advice to fans on their website so they can renovate their own houses before listing them. Here are three style tips you can implement alone or with a professional's help to sell your home faster, provided by HGTV's property restoration gurus.
Give your home a new paint job
You'd be surprised at just how much a fresh coat of paint can positively impact a living space! Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis state that updating your walls using various shades of gray and off-white will give the property's interior a new and clean appearance. "This gives the home an updated look and lets potential buyers more easily imagine that space as their own," the co-owners write on their website, Lamb & Co.
Fortunately, paint jobs are also one of the easier and less expensive projects that sellers can take on by themselves. Cans of interior paint are readily available at various hardware and home improvement stores, ranging in price from $15 per gallon for cheaper, flat formulas to upwards of $60 per gallon for higher-quality formulas with various special features. Relevant tools and accessories to get the job done like brushes and rollers are also relatively inexpensive and easy to find.
However, if you want to entrust the work to a professional instead, you can hire a crew in your area to tour your home and offer a quote estimating the cost of the job. Most contractors will charge by the size of the rooms being painted, with prices nationwide usually ranging from $2 to $6 per square foot. These expenses could cost you anywhere from $300 to $1,000 per room. Because this could sell your home faster and increase the value of your property, it may be worth the price.
Remove personal belongings
Another crucial step to making your listed house more appealing to potential buyers is removing your personal touch. This allows the visitors who tour the property to better visualize the home with their own unique styles at play, giving them a clean slate to imagine where to place furniture, allocate bedrooms, and ultimately picture a layout that works for their families. Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis say that memorbilia and junk are two specific types of belongings to get rid of before an open house. "While we know every piece has a great story, it's important to take down family photos and reduce clutter as much as possible," say the sisters, per Lamb & Co.
If your home contains little clutter to begin with, you might be able to store any extra knick-knacks and furnishings inside a garage, shed, or closet. However, if transporting all of your additional accessories to one of these locations would make that area feel just as cramped, consider moving them into a rental storage unit or the home of a family member or friend. You can conduct this move yourself or hire a full-service team if you think the job is too much to handle individually. Costs for such services, also referred to as on-demand storage, are typically calculated similarly to traditional self-storage services, charging customers a flat monthly rate to rent a physical unit. Fees allowing employees to transport your belongings back and forth from the facility are added as needed.
Stage the space
In continuation of the last step, make your home's interior look sleek, modern, and aesthetically pleasing to visitors by staging the rooms to highlight their individual assets while still leaving room for prospective buyers' imaginations. Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis state that professional staging is crucial to selling a home fast, and you can either hire someone to complete this task or do it yourself. If homeowners want to stage their homes themselves to save money, they can get inspiration from "Unsellable Houses." As the duo writes on Lamb & Co., "Our lives as unsellable realtors will give you plenty of tips!"
On the other hand, if you have little experience with interior design, it may be best to leave the staging to the pros. Professional stagers are typically a pricey investment, as they may charge between $300 and $700 to stage a single room or anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 to stage an entire house. These prices may fluctuate depending on the difficulty of the task at hand as well as the size of the home being staged. If a stager can complete the job using furniture and decor that's mostly, if not entirely, the homeowner's own, the project will cost less than a staging that would require them to bring in additional furniture, either through renting or purchasing the items from retailers.