5 Money Saving Tips for Preparing to Sell a House

Discover 5 money saving tips on preparing to sell a house (or rent a property as well). You'll find most of the items at your favorite local home improvement store and the best part is, they are so easy and inexpensive that anyone can do them. None of these are rocket science, but through the school of hard knocks, I have learned that these 5 tips for preparing to sell a house can be incredibly effective. Every real estate flipper, landlord, and even homeowner should know these before they sell a house. Here are your 5 money saving tips for preparing to sell a house:

Five Money Saving Tips For Preparing to Sell a House

 

These tips can be applied when you sell or rent a house; whether it's your own house or you're an investor or agent.  They can make a tremendous impact and help you get full price for the house.

 

1. Smell

 

The first tip is to have a great smelling house. You first need to get rid of any bad smells by using Gonzo Odor Eliminator; which is a little pouch of rocks that suck the bad smell out of a house. It works on pet urine, bacteria, smoke or cigarettes, by pulling the odors out of the air and usually takes about six hours. Afterwards you can lay the pouch out in the sun for a day and reuse it over and over again. The best place to put odor eliminator is going to be right inside of the air return duct because that's where all the air's being sucked into for the property. After you eliminate the existing odor, you need to replace it with something that smells great. I have found a scent mechanism that works better than anything else out there. Many of my competitors use a Glade plug-in but I have found something that, in my opinion, works even better.I use Scentsy, which is a candle wax warmer company with wax  bars that come in different scents, and ornamental Scentsy warmer candles. The nice thing is, there is no flame so you do not have to worry about it burning down a house.  You can replace the wax bars with new scents as often as you like, but this brand tends to last a lot longer then the ones you would find at your favorite home improvement stores.

What I really like about the Scentsy Warmer Candles is that you can buy a timer for $3 and set it so that the warmer goes on right before someone is showing up to see the house, which extends the life of the bars. The bars typically last about 7 days but with a timer you can get 2-3 weeks off of just two little bars.

When the house smells great, it makes a huge difference, because women often make the final decision in house buying, and they want things to smell good. Get a woman to help pick out the smell and then make sure that smell is going to attract the women that might be looking at that house.

 

2. Clean Off All of the Nicks and Marks on the Walls and Fill in Some Nail Holes.

 

First you need to get rid of any scruff marks on the walls by using a  Magic Eraser  by Mr. Clean. These things are terrific and very simple to use. You just get them a little wet and they've already got the cleaner inside of them. You can fill in the nail holes with a nail hole filler.

 

3.  Ceiling stains

 

It is never good to show a home with ceiling stains. First you need to find out what the problem is and fix whatever leak caused the ceiling stains. Then you need to seal it up and blend the stain in with the rest of the ceiling. One way to do this is by using Upshot, which is a shellac base primer that can help blend the stain in. You might also need to paint over the stain if that does not totally cover it up.

The key is you have to get rid of the stain, because you do not want potential buyers thinking there's a roof leak. When they think there's a roof leak, they think the roof needs to be replaced, and that sounds very scary to prospective buyers. Now you will probably not need to replace the roof because there are many reasons why things leak, but you need to fix and cover up the problem so that you do not scare people off.

 

4.    Get Rid of Carpet Stains

 

If the carpet is in terrible condition you might have to replace it, but you'd be surprised how often hiring a professional carpet cleaner can solve all kinds of problems. There is a product called Folex that is incredible at getting out stains. You just spray it on the spot and basically take your fingers or rag and rub the stain pretty heavily, and then blot it out with a paper towel. It's a good thing to keep in your vehicle so that when you're looking over a property or you're about to put a lock box in there to flip it, you can scrub out a couple of the stains.

 

5. Carpet Shield

 

This last tip epitomizes these powerful but simple tips for preparing to sell a house.  Once you've had your carpet cleaned, whether professionally or with Folex, you need to put down a carpet shield.  It's a self-adhesive film that protects the carpet from spills, plus makes people feel like you have new carpet even if you don't. If you use the carpet shield to form lanes that go from room to room, people tend to stay on those lanes and won't walk on the carpet as much. This means you won't get a bunch of trampling, so people do not know how many people have been at the property. This is important because if potential buyers go into a new home where there's a whole bunch of feet traffic on the carpet, they feel like a lot of other people have seen it and don't want to buy it, so they start to worry why it has not sold yet. When you're using a product like Carpet Shield and they're walking on this film instead, nobody knows how many people have been through the property.

 

Five Money Saving Tips For Preparing to Sell a House

 

1. Make it smell great. You get rid of the bad smell with the Gonzo and then replace it with a great smelling system like Scentsy.

 

2. Get rid of those scuff marks on the wall with a Magic Eraser. Fill in the nail holes with a nail hole filler.

 

3. Get rid of any ceiling stains. Now, first you need to fix whatever caused the stain, but once that is fixed, spray-paint over it with something called Upshot. Hopefully, the primer alone will at least cover it enough so that it doesn't draw any attention with the eye, but you may have to go to the next level and actually put some spray paint on top of the stain as well.

 

4. Make sure that the carpet is super clean. In some cases, you don't have to pay for carpet cleaning. You can just take that Folex product and clean the specific stains.

 

5. Cover the carpet with that plastic clear covering. This not only protects the carpet. , it makes people feel like it's a new carpet even if it's not. Then, when people are trampling through the house, especially if you show it a bunch of times, you won't see the markings on the carpet so people won't think a lot of other people have seen it.