Use wintertime to clean, declutter homes before listing them for sale

METRO DETROIT — Selling a home is never an easy task. However, several things can be done to make the process go as smoothly as possible, many of which can be done while stuck at home during the cold winter months.

“Declutter and depersonalize are key,” said Doug Shaw, of Shaw Home Realty.

“When in doubt, move it out,” Shaw said.

Shaw, who has been in the business for 37 years, said that people should clean out closets and storage areas and remove all personal photos. As it is winter, he suggested taking all one’s summer clothes that are not being used out of the closets.

“Take them out. Just take them out,” he said. “The closet will look twice as big.”

Matt Bazner, office manager at Max Broock Realtors in Royal Oak, suggested that while homeowners are decluttering their homes, they should also take the opportunity to pack their belongings. He said they could store them in the basement or garage.

“Part of that decluttering is starting to pack,” Bazner said. “You can pack it in boxes and start piling them up in the basement, because that tells anyone that’s coming through the home that they’re looking at that, ‘Oh, these people are actually moving.”

Bazner said that when potential buyers see a lot of stuff in the home as they are touring it, they start to worry about whether the seller will be able to vacate the property within 30 days after purchase. When homeowners have items visibly packed, it helps to ease the minds of potential buyers, as they realize the sellers have already started to move out.

The basic cleanliness of the home is also essential. Bazner said that having a clean home is the No. 1 priority for people trying to sell their house.

“A lot of my agents bring professional cleaning/staging as part of their value proposition to the client,” Bazner said, “because a lot of times what someone says is clean is not necessarily clean. We’ll say we need it ready for photos, and they just run around and dust things, and we’re like, no, we need it deep cleaned down to the baseboards.”

He said the idea is to have the buyers be able to see themselves living in the house from the second they walk in the door.

“The next family wants to envision themselves in the house, so you want to take down all personal photos and things of that nature,” Shaw said. “The closer the house can look to not being lived in, but lived in, is best off. The next family wants to envision themselves in the house, but all things being equal, we don’t want the house vacant.”

Bazner said that people should think of it as making their house resemble a model home.

“It is very impersonable, but it is pretty and beautiful, and it’s decorated and all that. But you can picture yourself there because it is neutralized. You know it’s not that person’s specific (stuff). You know — where they have crazy wallpaper and pink and purple. The seller is always like, ‘Well, someone is going to love it,’ and I’m like. ‘Yes, but you’re limiting the number of people that are willing to look at it to find the person that is going to love it.’”

He said that most sellers don’t want to spend a lot of money to sell their home. However, in order to sell it, he said that most homeowners should expect to put some money into their current home. Sometimes, he said, they have to work to convince the sellers to pay for some simple things that can dramatically increase the price that their house will sell for.

He explained that getting a house ready to sell is just like getting a leased car ready to turn back in. He said that just like you would have your leased vehicle cleaned and detailed prior to turning it in, you should expect to do the same prior to the sale of your home.

“Buyers don’t want projects. They’re looking for a home that they can move into and put their belongings, their furniture in, and not have to think about, ‘OK, this room is purple, I need to paint this before we even move into it,’” Bazner said. “The buyer pool is not interested in projects. They’re interested in turnkey, and they’re interested in, ‘I want something that I don’t have to do anything to it.’ If it’s neutral, if it’s a beige or anything like that, if they want a purple room, then they can paint a purple room.”

Along with cleaning, decluttering and removing all personal items from your home, Bazner suggested having a home inspection prior to the sale of the house, including a furnace inspection. That way, the seller won’t have any surprises or “aha moments” when a buyer looks at the home or sends in their own inspector.

“If you hire an inspector, it may cost you $300, but at least now you have a reference, and there may be some small things that the seller can do prelisting so it won’t come up on another inspection later and it’s not a surprise,” he said.

He also suggested that those living in older homes have someone come out and canvas the sewer line for breaks and issues. He said that it is pretty common for potential buyers to have someone run a camera down the sewer lines to check for this, so having it done ahead of time can save some time for both parties.

“That cost of sewer line replacement is $18,000 to $20,000-plus range. We see a lot of sewer line issues because Royal Oak, Ferndale, Berkley, this area has a lot of 1920s to 1950s homes, and the life expectancy of those sewer products is at life expectancy or beyond. So, the sewer line is a big one,” he said.

He said some other things homeowners can do to ready their homes for sale include having windows professionally cleaned, painting rooms and doors in neutral colors, having carpets cleaned, and eliminating all odors.

“Cleanliness and scents are the biggest deterrents of most people, and those are the things you can’t change,” Bazner said. “Because as soon as they walk in and smell something or they see dirt, (buyers) are turned off and it’s really hard to get them to start looking at the house at that point.”

However, he said, ultimately it all comes down to cleaning, decluttering and depersonalizing the home.

“It truly is the cheapest and best thing you could possibly do; if you don’t do anything else, have the house scrubbed top to bottom,” Bazner said. “A real deep clean gets into cleaning the appliances, the refrigerator, the oven, etc. Because once you get under contract, they will go in and test the oven and the appliances and make sure they’re in working order, and the cleaner it is, the better it looks. The dirtier a house is, the more things that look like they’ve been unkept is a clue to the agent and potentially the buyer that if this is how you live, then potentially you haven’t had the furnace looked at every year, maybe you haven’t had the gutters cleansed, and things like that. So, all those little things build up to try and tell a story, and we as agents don’t want a story to be told over things in the house.”