If you want to know how to invest the least amount of money to make the greatest possible return when selling your home, & you are ready to consider alternatives to the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the old, tired general rhetoric of the traditional information mills that have become more aligned with click bait & lifestyle magazines, then you have come to the right place.

The mainstream media guff that is most prevalent when seeking reference material for ‘How to Prepare My Home for Sale’ would have you think that you need to perform major overhauls with items that are almost completely subjective like painting, replacing flooring/ fixtures/fences/appliances, renovating kitchens and bathrooms and other improvements that you will never get to fully enjoy. These are personal preference options that are much higher risk and lower return in the common sense. You will never be able to fully quantify the actual return on spending $15,000 on renovations, taking on the stressors involved with the work, & the opportunity costs of the displaced liquidity.

While it is possible that you NAIL the particular color or floor that the ‘highest and best’ buyer would adore, or choose the ideal material or finish on the renovations, when you are really getting real about real estate as an investment you have to separate the distinctive differences between the Emotive/Lifestyle and the Logical/R.O.I.. Yes, we ‘buy’ based on emotions, but we justify with logic.

To that end, I suggest that there are three items that are the best products and services to invest in for the purpose of properly preparing your home for sale. You will usually find that you can do all three for less than $1500, and in doing so, I am also throwing down a gauntlet for the community of real estate industry professionals to establish these as the foundation of preliminary representation of real assets.

The Big 3 ‘Prepping’ Investments

1. Professional Appraisal:

You have likely already made this investment!

When you purchased your current property, you likely paid for this product for the purposes of a mortgagor, and hopefully, received & kept a copy. It is truly unfortunate how many times that I have visited with folks that have no idea if they actually received a copy, and if they did they don’t know if/where they kept it. While the product and the valuation that it supports are outdated and invalid, there is still 1 specific piece of data that may be immensely valuable.

The square footage of the subject property. When most people are shopping, they establish their basis of value on $/oz, $/lb, $/gal, and $/sf.

Find it!

Know the exact size of your property ‘per appraisal’. Sellers are notorious for being general & ‘rounding up’(2986 in NOT 3000), & that rarely works well when you are wanting to establish trust & goodwill in your offering. The truth ALWAYS comes out, & you will be in a better position if you under-promise/over-deliver every time.

If there is ANY doubt or discrepancy in what you were told or believe the size of your property to be, invest in a new appraisal for the purpose of market pricing. They are usually between $300-$500 for a full pre-market appraisal, & you can get an appraiser to simply measure the subject property for you for $100-$150.

I had a client recently who was the General Contractor in building his own home. He had built it to be 3089sf. The courthouse records had it at 2965.

Which would you, Mr HomeBuyer, believe to be the more valid representation?

They paid an appraiser $125 to measure the home, & that independent service provider established a heated & cooled square footage of 3181sf. At $140/sf sales price, they increased their value >$30k for a $125 investment.

Side note on ‘pricing’ a property for sale: Get multiple counsels! Call 2-3 real estate agents that offer a ‘free’ CMA (Comparable Market Analysis)((they ALL do)) . Real estate agents are precluded from charging you for anything outside of a contracted service, & it will be entirely educational, entertaining, & enlightening to see what value they come up with & their specific ‘spin’ of justification.

2. Professional Pre-Inspection:

You have to sell a home 3 times.

First, to the Buyer. Second, to the Appraiser. Third, to the Home Inspector.

The first one is easy. They fall in love with the home and write up the contract.

Then they call in the ‘Bad Cop’… the Home Inspector. And, guess what? Houses are like people. They are ALL a little messed up. The most pain and loss of equity in the real estate sales process comes in the negotiations for the laundry-list of repairs that almost always presents when the Inspector has provided his diagnosis. You will be amazed at how many issues will come up, & you thought your house was just fine. Ungrounded wires or malfunctioning outlets, missing covers/screens/filters, water leaks or pressure issues, compromised ductwork, ad infinitum… & every little thing adds up to $500-$15k real quick.

For ~$350, you can circumvent almost all of that. Be proactive, & take the initiative to find out what is wrong with your property before you actively market it, fix what you know you need to/want to, & then you are marketing a home that is ‘Pre-Inspected’. The Buyer will feel dramatically more confident in making a well-informed purchasing decision, you will have eliminated most of the leverage that they would have had in their secondary stages of negotiation, & you will be the type of Seller that is doing unto others as you would have them do to you. KNOW what it is that you are selling, with all its faults and defects.

3. Landscaping/Curb Appeal:

Do the stuff that is ‘dirt cheap’!

A few bags of mulch, maybe a few seasonal perennials, trim the hedges, & slap a fresh coat of paint on the shutters/gabel/garage door. This is the stuff that properly sets the stage for the best ‘first impression’. You will always make a greater return on $500 of impactful landscaping than you will on a $15,000 kitchen renovation.

Remember that, unless you have been procrastinating and it has become absolutely critical that you paint your entire house or replace a bunch of busted stuff, it is always best to package your offering in a way that acknowledges that it may not be perfect and that you are willing to make allowances with an acceptable contract. As a matter of fact, it is in everyone’s best interest if you are the first to make mention of any weaknesses that the property has, as it will always come out in the wash. One principle that will always guide you properly on the path of selling real estate is: “How would this sound to a judge?”

I’m on a mission. Real Estate WITHOUT Agents!

I’m here to inspire, educate & empower the HomeOwner of the Information Age to more profit & less stress in their real estate transactions.

It’s not rocket science. If I can do it, ANYBODY can do it.

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