The Journey Transformation - Preparing Your Home to Achieve the Highest Level of Success!

With the holiday season now in full swing, most folks have pushed the thought of buying or selling a home to the backburner. While we understand the holidays are a time for rest, family, and fun, we’re encouraging our clients to embrace the seasonal slowdown as an opportunity to set new goals and establish a plan for the New Year. Especially as it pertains to their real estate related ambitions. 

As we look ahead towards the spring months we're reminded that timing is only part of the equation when it comes to getting top dollar on the sale of your home. It’ll also take careful planning and preparation which doesn’t happen overnight. Here in the Northern Bay Area most sellers can expect to spend around 3-6 weeks preparing their home, another 7-21 days with their house on the market, and 21-30 days in the closing process. Historically here in Marin and Sonoma Counties, the Spring market is when we see the most appreciation take place. 

As one of Marin’s top-producing teams, we pride ourselves on being students of the market and we’ve worked hard to craft a home preparation formula that maximizes return on Investment and alleviates headaches. We are now in a much more balanced market where not everything is selling immediately, so property prep is highly encouraged. Knowing that every client and every home is unique, we carefully tailor our proven process to satisfy varying needs. We also serve as project managers and can do all of the heavy lifting on behalf of our clients. We even can subsidize the upgrades and be reimbursed when the house sells. 

Leveraging our process throughout 2022, our team helped clients exceed their selling expectations countless times. Of our many success stories, 54 Calypso Shores, stands out as an especially excellent case study on the value of property prep. After having no luck offering the property “off-market” as-is for $1.1mm in late 2021, our clients entrusted our team to execute on our proposed listing preparation strategy. With our guidance, the sellers invested a total of $35k into a number of cosmetic upgrades, staging, and roughly $10k worth of drainage improvements. Just 7 days after listing at $1,135,000 our sellers attracted a total of 15 offers, most of which were entirely non-contingent. The winning offer closed roughly three weeks later for $165k above the asking price! The transformation is documented in the video below.

So…if you’re thinking of selling your home this spring — March, April, or May — here are 8 things you can knock out NOW that will make it all worthwhile come Spring (and yes, we have wonderful resources and referrals we are happy to share). 

8 To-Do’s to Prep Your Home to Sell this Spring

1) Declutter, donate, and organize your closets, drawers, attics and garage.

2) Identify major repairs and make a plan to fix them one by one.

3) Ensure that major appliances are in working condition. 

4) Focus painting efforts - think entryway, foyer, kitchen, and bathrooms.

5) Tackle the cosmetics - consider replacing door hardware, light fixtures, carpet, cabinet knobs.

6) Devise a strategy to enhance or restore your landscaping.

7) Replace your house numbers and mailbox to make it easy for sellers to find your home.

8) Reach out to your agent (me!) If you're out of the area, I can refer you to a great agent.

Selling your home in 2023? Let’s partner together to maximize your profits. DM me to get started!