Currently the number of days on market for homes selling in Thurston County is 36. That means it takes an average of 36 days to sell your home right now in Thurston County. How can you sell your home faster than everyone else? Here are some tips.
Homemade Touches
When I look at homes, I don’t want to buy a rental. I don’t want my customers to buy a rental. I want them to move into a well-loved home. A home that was taken care of by its previous owners because they cherished their living space and treated it like one of the family. They took care of repairs as they were needed and the home was never neglected. That’s the home I want for myself. That’s the home I want for my clients.
The easiest way to recognize a well-loved home is in the homemade touches. It’s easy to drive to Hobby Lobby, grab some pillows and decorations that are poorly made in China. But it takes love to sit down and sew items for your home with the finest material and craft items.
Here’s a really cute throw pillow sewn from strips of red and white cotton with a patch of denim in the corner and white buttons. Easy to sew and really adorable on your sofa.
If you’re not really into stars and stripes for the July 4th holiday, then cats are always popular and make a cute showpiece for your living room.
If you really don’t have time to sew, there’s always online stores.
My favorite homemade craft store is Etsy.
Small Space Makeovers
Every home has its small spaces. These are usually where the vacuum cleaner, extra toys, and junk sits in the room because no one knows what to do with it. Here are some beautiful ideas for making over small spaces and turning them into the eye-catching parts of your home that start a bidding war. Families love these because it gives the kids a place to be calm, do their homework, or just read.
This cute little nook is on the covered porch of a home. They took a twin bed platform and some cushions and made a little bed/sofa then they inserted little sideways shelves above to make book shelves. Adorable and very clever.
This little nook was made by combine pieces of various furniture. I see a platform bed, two headboards, and wall lamps. Perfect for two kids in the family to have their own space to do their homework or read.
This little book nook is easy to make with two bookshelves and a hope chest in between. Put a cushion on the hope chest, add some throw pillows, and fill those shelves with books. Done. But what a beautiful place to sit at the end of the day or the beginning of it.
This little nook is right inside the front door of a home. It’s the perfect place to sit, take off your shoes, and relax for a few moments before starting the family dinner. After dinner, it’s the perfect place to have one-on-ones with your kids at the end of their busy day. It’s also very aesthetically pleasing.
Sparkling Kitchen
The best way to sell your kitchen is by making it sparkling clean. The kitchen is where most of the oil, smells, and dirt end up because cooking oil sprays everywhere and that stuff makes everything stick. If you’re a fan of Pinterest (I am), there are hundreds of recipes for floor cleaner, cupboard cleaner, and granite cleaner (for granite countertops). If you have something in the kitchen to clean, there’s a recipe on pinterest to clean it.
This simple homemade cleaner makes wood cabinets and wood floors look sparkling new. Seriously. It easily removes old grime, cooking oil, and everything sticky in the kitchen. But the best part is that it works well as an all-purpose cleaner around the entire house and it smells heavenly if you use lemon essential oil in the recipe.
The only thing you SHOULDN’T use the all-purpose cleaner on is granite countertops. For granite, use this recipe. It cleans granite to sparkling new.
And don’t forget to use this homemade recipe for keeping pests out of your home. Even if it’s sparkling clean, your home viewers will see pests and turn around and leave.
Heavenly Scents
Once you’ve made your home presentable for buyers, now what? Leave your home for an hour then come back and walk room to room sniffing the air. How does your house smell? If you have pets, probably not so great. Here are a couple of recipes to keep in mind for odors of any kind, but especially pet odors. **NOTE: Cats do not metabolize essential oils so please do not use scents with these cleaners if you have cats.**
I’ve seen variations of this recipe, but I have to admit this is effective. Baking soda is wonderful for all types of odors.
If you’ve shopped at Williams-Sonoma, you will recognize this scent and it’s easy to make with ingredients you already have at home.
If these two recipes don’t make your home smell wonderful and don’t mask the scents from pets, I have two other recommendations.
Go to a pet store and purchase a 32 oz bottle of Nature’s Miracle in the white and red bottle. This stuff is incredible. It works with enzymes to eat through everything in your carpet that creates an odor. It works on vomit, cat and pet odors, urine, and even feces. It may take several applications, but it does work. It even works on car upholstery and furniture. Mattresses too. If you see a stain after application, just reapply. The stain will eventually go away.
Rent a commercial carpet cleaner from a store like Safeway and fill the basin with water and vinegar. Clean the carpet this way. Once the carpet is sort of dry, fill the basin with a small amount of Meyers Multi-Surface Concentrate (in any scent you want) and water then clean the carpet again. Let it mostly dry then repeat step 2 with water and Meyers concentrate for a third cleaning. Then you are done.
Smokers and Mold
Smoking gets into the walls and floors of your home. It does not go away. Most smokers have lost their sense of smell and don’t recognize smoking odors. But the easiest way to get rid of them is with an ozone generator. Oddly enough, ozone generators also get rid of most mold. So if you smoke, have a family member who smokes, or you have mold in your home, rent or buy an ozone generator and use it several times until you remove the smoke damage or remove the mold.
Ozone generators have timers for a reason–you are NOT supposed to be in the house when you use it. So set the timer, grab the family, and go have an ice cream at Baskin Robbins or a frappuccino at Starbucks. Also realize that this works by room size. If you use a small ozone generator you will need to use it for each room in your home and maybe more than once in each room. Plan on it taking a week to completely rid your home of smoking smells or mold.
When I take a buyer on a showing through a home, I look for several things–homemade touches that show the home was loved, efficient use of space including those small spaces, cleanliness, and odor and mold-free. These are what tell the buyer this is a house that was loved and lived in by a family. 😉
Leave a Reply