As a seller, you’ve done the prep work- made the touchups and repairs, decluttered and depersonalized, and CROP-ed (Clean, Replace, Organize & Pack) your home for this moment. It’s time for showings! Here’s my top tips for making your home feel like it could be their home, too.

CREATE AN EXPERIENCE

The first step is to transform your home to create an experience for buyers. It’s important to paint a picture that will allow the potential buyers to picture themselves living in your home. You want them thinking about Saturday morning coffee and pancakes at the breakfast bar and movie nights on the comfy sectional they’re going to put in the living room

This means removing distractions, highlighting your home’s best features, and making your home shine before the buyers arrive. The best way to optimize the showing experience is to create a checklist (or request mine which has all the tips I learned from experience ready for you to implement).

SET THE SCENE

Next, think about the normal things you do at home – you have coffee, you spend time in the kitchen, watch Netflix on the couch, sit on the deck, do laundry, etc. When it comes to prepping for a showing that sells, you want to create an experience that makes the buyers feel at home. Here are a few things you can do:

1. Brew a fresh pot of coffee and leave out disposable cups out so they can help themselves to a cup if they want. Either way, the smell of the coffee will make it feel homey!
2. Set the thermostat to 72 degrees (that’s my go to perfect temp that I recommend to sellers). If it’s a really nice day with a breeze, open up the windows and turn on the fans!
3. Turn on some background music – something classy!
4. Light a candle
5. If you have a laundry space you want to highlight, have the dryer running – the sound of the dryer will create that at home feel in the buyer’s mind.
6. Have Netflix pulled up on the TV – you don’t have to have anything playing but maybe just show the smart tv screen if you have a den or tv room.

DON’T FORGET LIGHTING… AND TOILET SEATS

Turn on every single light (inside and out) including under the counter lighting, lamps, all of them. Then open all the blinds and curtains. The brighter, the better, no matter what time of day it is!

Do a quick scan of the house and make sure that all of the toilet seats are SHUT! This gets forgotten more than you’d think but don’t let it be you. If it is, it will 100% be a topic of conversation between the buyers and you don’t need to be remembered for that.

CREATE A TOP TEN LIST

When you’re prepping for a showing that sells, you have to dig deep! It’s likely that the buyers are touring multiple houses the day they come through yours so you need to give them as much info as you possibly can about your house in an easy to understand way.

Enter: The Top 10 List.

This is the list created by the sellers themselves where they share what they love most about where they live. The more things you share that a buyer can’t physically see from walking around your home, the better.

I’m talking things like the fact that you love that the bike trail is only a block away where you can ride your bikes into town to the Farmer’s Market. Or how you love the sound of the birds chirping in the morning while you have coffee on your porch. The little things.

They might be tied to the lifestyle your house creates or they could be more location specific- is there a local coffee shop in walking distance where you take your laptop and sip your cold brew to spark creativity once or twice a week? Those are the things I want you to share!

And on that note, now is your last chance to get your hands on the entire Showings That Sell checklist! While all sellers that I represent receive a printed copy, CLICK HERE to download yours today!