Will a buyer walk into the home you are trying to sell and just not 'get' the house? People seldom fall in love with things they don't understand, except where the opposite sex is concerned. It just makes sense to make the rooms in your house make sense before going to market. (Ooh, did that sound confusing?)
When a family has inhabited a house for long enough, the rooms in the house will have developed alternative personalities. The lounge is not just the lounge any more; it might have developed into dad's home-office-come-lounge. The kitchen transformed into mom's painting-studio-food-preparation room. And the kids' bedrooms became library-sleeping rooms and computer-lab-nappers.
The duel usage of a single purpose room is not a bad thing. That is what makes a house a home. But potential buyers most probably have different needs than your family. They will eventually change the rooms in the house to suit them. But before they can commit to buying the place, they need to be able to understand your house and imagine where their stuff might go.
When putting your house up for sale, the lounge should be a lounge, the kitchen a kitchen, the bedrooms bedrooms, etc. There should not be any confusion about the purpose of a room.
I have often waked into a house that came up for sale, just to be met with a confusing clutter in every room. You age greeted in the entry-way by a stand overloaded with computer equipment. And the door that should open into the double garage cannot be opened more than a crack, because of the piles of junk stacked inside.
You walk into the 'living room', but find a pool table taking up most of the room. There’s a bamboo bar in one corner and a dartboard on the wall above the couch. What is a prospective buyer to think? Is this a lounge or a pub?
The dining room, or what one might expect to be the dining room, has a sewing machine on one end of the dining room table, an overlocker on the sideboard and an upright piano against the opposite wall (with stacks of sheet music to accompany).
In one bathroom, a person would have to squeeze past an automatic washing machine to climb into the bath. And in the other one, the bathroom door cannot be fully opened because of the three wetsuits hanging from hooks behind it.
You eventually open the door to a room you know is a bedroom, despite it trying to impersonate a home gym. You know, the type of bedroom where you wake up sweating, with a satisfying burn in all your muscles.
A house like this might have promise. The problem is that only the current owners can see it! Without trying, the sellers have succeeded in confusing potential buyers at every turn.
Without jumping head first into a full home staging, home sellers can get buyers excited by simply making their house make sense. Assign one traditional purpose for each room, and then take away anything that does not fit into the picture you created in your mind. You can go a step further and add the little details that drives the message home.
The lounge, for example, should be a place to relax, spend time with the family, or entertain guests. Comfy couches, a coffee table with a few neatly stacked glossy magazines (not porn!) in a magazine stand, and maybe a television set, is all you want there.
Question: "But where do I go with all the other stuff?"
Answer: Move it to your new home.
The best thing a home seller can do, to make sure the property gets sold, is to move out. Get everything out of the house: Yourselves, the kids, the clutter, the pets and their odors. Leave behind a few pieces of beautiful furniture and a few tasteful decorations - even if you have to rent it.
An empty house is better, when it becomes time to sell, than a cluttered one.
Question: "But what do we do if we can’t afford to move until we sell? What do we do with our stuff?"
Answer: Sell it, burn it, dump it or store it somewhere else. Get rid of everything you can.
Have a yard sale. Or phone your local pawn shop and ask them to come give you a quote for your stuff. They will load it on a truck and haul it away for you, and you'll get paid in cash.
Donate some stuff to the church, the Salvation Army, or the Red Cross. You'll feel great about doing some good for other people.
Take everything you cannot sell or donate to the dump. It is junk. Be honest, you will never use it. Throw it out!
And finally: Take the stuff you feel you need to keep to a rental warehouse or storage facility. It will be safe and secure, but won't clutter your (now) lovely house.
Question: "But storing stuff costs money too! Wouldn't it be cheaper just leaving the stuff in the house?"
Answer: True. Storage costs money.
But think about this: If your house spends an extra month on the market, waiting for that elusive buyer who can see through all the clutter, you will spend an extra month's mortgage repayment, which could have been better spent somewhere else.
And if your cluttered home sits on the market for an additional three months, you may have to drop your asking price by 5% or more! If the buyers cannot see the value in your home, because it is all covered up with stuff, you will have to give some value away for free.
Do the math! Storing your stuff off-site is a lot cheaper than challenging potential buyers with a house that does not make sense.
If you want to sell your home, at a good price and in good time, make the house make sense.
