It’s nearing the busy time of year for buying and selling homes. Last year at this time, we were preparing for our 850 mile move. First on the agenda was selling our house. Of course, a big part of that is making sure your house looks great for the showings, which can be especially challenging with kids.
Usually your realtor will let you know at least a few hours ahead of time if a showing is scheduled. Some realtors use a system in which you receive a text asking if the house can be shown during a window of time and you reply yes or no via text message. You’ll want to leave your house about ten minutes before the scheduled showing time.
Here are some tips you may find useful as you prepare for realtors showing your home to potential buyers:
Dishes
1. Use disposable plates and cups for a couple of hours before the showing. Then, you can toss them in the trash and you won’t have dishes in the sink.
2. Put any dishes that don’t normally go in the dishwasher in there for the time being if you don’t have time to wash them by hand. Just don’t forget to take them out later.
Clutter
3. If there are a few things laying around and you don’t know where to put them, stick them in the trunk of your vehicle(s). You definitely want to make your home look as clutter-free as possible. For us, it was usually toys that we were trying to stick into the trunk.
Pets
4. If you have a dog and live near Petco, you can take your dog there to get them out of the house during the showing.
5. Do as many errands as you can while you’re out. If the whole family is in the vehicle and you have a dog, family members can take turns going into places one or two at a time so someone can stay with the dog.
Fresh Scent
6. Spray your house with Fresh Wave natural odor eliminating spray or light a Fresh Wave candle before the potential buyers arrive. I love Fresh Wave because it has all natural ingredients and it truly smells fresh and clean.
Good luck! We only had to go through about ten or eleven showings before someone made an offer. What a relief it was to not have to keep the house “show ready”. Do you have more tips to add to the list?
~ Carrie
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Great tips! I love the one about putting clutter in your car. I would love if you would come share this, and any of your other posts, at What’d You Do This Weekend? The party is open now at http://joylovefood.com/whatd-you-do-this-weekend-7/ 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing this at What’d You Do This weekend? I hope you will join us again this Monday morning 🙂
Thanks so much Joy!
Carrie
love it, Carrie! I have one tip…don’t hang out in the garage and leave your two-year-old asleep in the master bedroom, making it look like an abandoned child…we didn’t stay to look around and didn’t put in an offer 🙂
Whoa! That’s interesting, Kaitlyn! I wouldn’t have looked around for long either.
Carrie
These are great tips! I’ve been to some interesting showings in the past, where families were just hanging out and nothing was clean. That’s definitely not how you’re going to sell your home. 🙂
For sure, Tiffany! Thanks!
Carrie
I can definitely relate to the clutter in the car idea. I love to have a good clean out often throughout the year regardless of what event might be coming up and I always put everything I am getting rid of straight into the car boot. This way I get the clutter out of the house immediately, I am less likely to think that a garage sale will be a good idea and I can drop it off to the good samaritans the next time I am driving past. http://www.lifewrangling.com/cutting-the-clutter/
Thanks, Jen!
Carrie