Welcome To Your FREE Seller's Guide!

The Seller's Dream - How to Maximize Profit and Minimize Days on Market

Throughout this guide I will share with you the crucial steps to preparing your home (or any home) for sale! This will help people both maximize profits and sell their homes faster. I look forward to hearing about your progress and helping you with any questions you may have along the way. Feel free to call, text, or email me (to ensure the quickest response, call or text).

                                                                                                                                  Sincerely,
                                                                                                                                                         Ryan Rutter

PREFACE:

When you are thinking about selling, you must first understand the difference between staging and decorating. Decorating caters to one's personal tastes, styles, likes/dislikes, and is meant for the person living in the home. Staging involves displaying a property specifically for the purpose of marketing the home for sale so that it appeals to the broadest possible market of buyers.

Don’t confuse decorating and staging. The goal is to present your home so that it appeals to the broadest possible market, which may or may not coincide with your personal preferences.

When following this guide, realize that everyone’s home and circumstances are different, which means you will have to apply these steps according to your own individual abilities and finances.

In the upcoming steps, we will focus our efforts on small fixes that make BIG impacts, while letting the buyers do the remodeling. Keep in mind that large projects may not pay for themselves, allow for profit, and can turn into big headaches. Unless a large project makes financial sense, choose to focus on the small things. The first step in this guide is DECLUTTERING, so let's get started!

What is decluttering? To declutter is to remove unnecessary items from an overcrowded space. This is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT YOU CAN DO in order to prepare your home for sale. The goal is to remove visual clutter and define a space. This includes removing excess items and/or unnecessary furniture that makes rooms feel and/or appear small or overcrowded. Remove the unnecessary items that take up precious floor and wall space.

An example of "defining a space" might be if you're using a bedroom as both a guest room and an office, it might be a good idea to choose one or the other, so the room appears less crowded.

Remember what I said about applying these steps to your own individual circumstances? In this instance, if you can’t afford to rent a storage unit when decluttering, use your garage, have a yard sale, give/throw things away, or ask if you can store it with a friend or relative.

Categorize the Clutter

1. Items to throw away
2. Items to donate
3. Items to pack up and store
4. Items to use for staging

Declutter - The Kitchen

If these items have been sitting on your counter and you haven’t used them in the last 4-8 weeks, you might want to consider putting them away in a cabinet or storing them somewhere:

Here are some pictures that might help:

Notice all of the knick-knacks on the counter and above cabinets, the multiple jars of oil, the green salt and pepper dish, tea pot, radio, and multiple items on the refrigerator. This is a very nice kitchen, but a potential buyer might not be able to see the kitchen through all the clutter.

How about a before and after? Notice in the photo above, the fern on top of the cabinet is gone, the refrigerator is cleaned off, counters are cleaned up, and the things that were stacked on top of the refrigerator are gone too. The one thing I will note about the before image is that I like the open blinds and lighting (sun coming through the window). In this instance, there is beautiful scenery outside of the window, so you are always encouraged to open the blinds when this is the case. Also, instead of using deep colors, such as the placemats, choose something lighter and more neutral.   

One of the major differences in these photos above (besides lighting) is that the after photo is missing the coffee maker, blender, and espresso machine underneath the right cabinet. It also has the picture frames and radio replaced with a decorative plant.  

Declutter - The Bathroom

Kitchens and baths are known as deal makers and deal breakers. Nobody wants to cook their food in a messy or cluttered place. Likewise, nobody wants to bathe where they feel they’ll be dirtier than when they entered. These are some items that tend to clutter your bathroom counters:

  Basically, if you have 1 shampoo, 1 conditioner, 1 soap in the shower, 1 soap dispenser on the counter per sink, 1 toothbrush holder (if you don’t have a place to put them out-of-sight), and maybe 1 new candle or small staging item like a succulent plant, you should be good. Simplify and declutter! In the photo above, I would put the basket in the cabinet and put something decorative in its place. That being said, it looks much better than before!  

Declutter - The Bedroom

In bedrooms, make sure to maximize the space! Remove excess furniture or clutter that takes up precious floor
space. A 12x12 or 10x10 room can be made to seem large or small depending on how it is staged. Simply provide a CLEAN, DEFINED, and DECLUTTERED room with maximized floor space! Here are some suggestions for simplifying and uncluttering:

• Clean off the top of your dressers (maybe one candle or decor item)
• Clean off the top of your nights stands (maybe a lamp and/or decor item)
• Tidy up or remove cables such as phone chargers
• Remove Televisions (next time you watch "Fixer Upper" or HGTV, notice there are no T.V.'s in bedrooms)
• Less is typically more (simplify the space)
• Remove/hide remotes and/or controllers
• Make your bed, which might mean buying a "bed in a bag"

One note about the picture above... Although the mat on the floor is okay, the bedroom would look larger in photos and in person if it were removed. Congratulations, you made it through the first critical step!! The second step to maximizing profit and selling your home in less time is to DEPERSONALIZE!