Sticking to your New Year's resolutions might not be a priority anymore, but if you're ready to sell your home, you'll want to prioritize these three tips. To make it easier, only 1 requires physical work (phew!). You can get more money from the sale of your home (I'm talking $1000s!) when it's prepped and staged to sell. Lace up those sneakers, and let's prepare your house to sell!

3 D's to Home Selling

Once you've decided to sell your house, the next step is to declutter, deep clean, and depersonalize it. Remember the physical work I mentioned above? Time to jump into your activewear and burn some calories!

• Declutter
• Deep Clean
• Depersonalize

Decluttering your house can be as simple as putting everything you don't use daily into storage boxes. Then, move the boxes into a storage unit or a charming neighbor's garage (you'll owe them dinner, but it will be worth it). If you want to avoid sorting through those same boxes once you move into your new home, apply the O.H.I.O. trick from this article (I highly recommend it).

Declutter by packing everything that you don't use on a daily basis into boxes and storing them away from your house.

Keep furniture at a minimum when preparing to sell your house.  If you have 3 chairs and 2 couches in your living room, consider removing all but one chair and one couch.  Organize your furniture around a beautiful area rug and a coffee table to make it easy for potential home buyers to envision themselves living there.

Once you've decluttered, you'll want to depersonalize your house. What exactly does depersonalization mean? Most of us need to remove personal photos and trinkets and keep a minimal amount of neutral wall art. Decluttering and depersonalizing your house will make the rooms appear bigger, appealing to more home buyers (yea!).

Depersonalization makes it easier to sell your house for the highest price.

Once you've depersonalized your house, deep clean inside and out. I’m talking room-by-room, floor-to-ceiling, corner-to-corner, deep cleaning. Deep cleaning will be much easier now that you no longer have to work around knick-knacks and clutter.  Consider deep cleaning one room per day or hiring a professional cleaner so your home shines in photos and in person.  

Professional House Photos

Now that you've accomplished the 3 D's and your house is prepped for sale, you'll need someone to take professional photos. If you have a real estate agent, they will have access to a professional photographer but ask them, so they don't end up with photos taken with a smartphone (big eye roll, but some agents do this). Don't get me wrong, a few smartphone photos for social media is one thing, but professional photos are essential to showcase your house and attract more home buyers.

Professional house photos will attract more home buyers and a higher selling price.

Unplug Emotions

Cutting the emotional ties to our home is a challenging step for those of us who have lived in our houses for a long time (I'm going on 23 years!), but we need to keep our emotions in check. Remember, you can take all the memories you made in your house with you.  It's essential that your real estate agent price your home according to what it's worth in today's housing market vs. putting an emotional price tag on it.

Conclusion

Time to prepare your home to sell this year! Talk to your real estate agent about other steps you need to take besides the three outlined above to get the most out of the sale of your home. If you need a local real estate agent, please let us know at info@reazo.com. Happy selling!

For more information on selling your house, visit Reazo's free home seller guide: