As the housing market changes and you are trying to sell, there is some planning and preparation before exposure to well-qualified buyers.
The days of an open house and then escrow are behind us, for now. So, instead of spending the first few days on the market reviewing a flood of offers, you now have to work on getting organized, turning on strategic lights, and keeping all counters and other surfaces clean. And you’ll have to maintain this pattern for several days, if not weeks, until an offer is made.
If everyone in your house leaves in the morning, and the house is empty all day, you need to “show ready” the house in case an agent calls to make an appointment.
This means hanging up all the bath towels (or replacing the used towels with fresh, fluffy ones that morning), making the bed, putting lids on toilets, taking out the trash, cleaning the sink and turning over breakfast dishes. On enough interior illumination to make it look as bright as possible.
Yes, the possibility of all this means waking up earlier than usual so that all the preparatory work can be completed and not late for work.
For those working from home, you’ll need an exit strategy when buyers come in to call during the workday.
Can you take your laptop to the park across the street? Or shift your workstation to a local coffee shop with free WiFi? And what about kiddos? Are they on zoom from home? Can you take them with you to the coffee shop? Do you have a plan for everyone at home including where they will go during a showing appointment? (That means pets, too.)
You can even turn the display into a game.
See if you can find any clues (besides the business card at the kitchen counter) that the agent and his buyer were there. Do you have an unfamiliar bottle of water in your recycle bin that wasn’t there when you left? Is there a light on that you left on and or maybe vice versa?
Is the toilet seat up when you clearly remember to drop it down? Are any bedroom doors locked that have been left open? And what’s most frustrating is the garage door locking when you always leave it open?
Here’s a handy tip for demonstration: Take a spare key with you, and make one for all family members, just in case the doors that were always unlocked are now closed, a key to get in. is needed.
Leslie Sargent Eskildson is an agent with RealtyOne Group West and a member of the Board of Directors of the California Association of Realtors. She can be contacted at 949-678-3373 or [email protected]
