When it’s time to sell a house, many homeowners start thinking about sprucing up the place or doing some renovations to get the most out of the sale. While renovations are a good idea, some are more important than others.

Kitchen and bathroom renovations help a homeowner recoup the investment more than something like putting in new sod or replacing the home’s siding. Some renovations are fairly simple, inexpensive, and are worth doing.

Over time, the walls and baseboards in a home can look dull and have marks where the paint has been dinged. An instant renovation that can make the home look up to date and fresh is to paint the rooms in your house that need it.

If you have an accent wall in an extremely bold color, you might want to paint anyway, because most potential buyers prefer neutral paints. It helps them be able to imagine themselves living there.

The kitchen is one room where you’ll really find that making renovations are worth it. If you have old appliances, you’ll want to update those. If you have a faded looking backsplash, you’ll want to replace it.

If it’s not as modern as the ones in newer homes, you’ll want to replace it because an older backsplash detracts from a kitchen’s appeal. Things like new tile look fresh and really spruce up a kitchen.

Potential buyers also check out the countertops in a kitchen. The most popular of all materials used on countertops is granite. It’s long lasting and will stand up to a lot of wear and tear.

If you have old countertops – especially if your home is dated – and you have those old Formica ones, you’ll want to replace them. That doesn’t mean that you have to tear out the cabinets.

You don’t want to do that – especially if they’re good ones. You can get granite counter tops from a home improvement store and just have it professionally cut and fitted.

It’s a lot less expensive than you might think. If your cabinets are in good shape, then you can just spruce them up with some paint or new hardware. In addition to the kitchen, the bathroom is a strong selling point in a house.

One that has a stained tub or an outdated vanity doesn’t have much appeal. This is one renovation that will help you sell your home. Put in a new vanity if it needs it and either refinish a stained tub or put in a surround.

Make sure that you renovate your yard, too. You want plenty of curb appeal so that your home makes a good first impression. This is a renovation that doesn’t have to cost much. You can place some new mulch around trees and shrubs and add colorful flowers in planters on the porch.

Good luck to all first time home buyers don’t be overwhelmed by the process, just know that it’s worth it. #realestatetips #firsttimehomebuyer #ScottAhing #realtorlife??

The purpose of showing your home is to hook a buyer. You want the buyers to come through your house and be impressed – so impressed in fact, that they’re ready to make an offer.

You’ll have one chance to make a first impression on the potential buyers and you want to make it count. Focusing on the outside is the first tip. Make sure that you don’t neglect the outside of your home.

Curb appeal can make or break the odds of someone even bothering to get out of the car to come in. If they pull up and see a home with a lawn that obviously needs edging and has an unkempt flower bed, they’re going to wonder what else hasn’t been cared for properly.

You want the outside of your home to be spotless. Clean the siding, the windows, and the doors. Make sure there are no dirt smudges, no cobwebs and that anything that needs painting has been spiffed up.

The second tip is to take yourself out of the house. That means that you want to take out all the personal stuff. Remove the family photos from the wall or tables. You want the home to look neutral so that the potential buyers can look at your house and picture it as themselves living there.

Everything should be as neutral as possible in terms of personal items. The third tip is to pare down all the extra clutter you see at first glance. If you look around, it’ll amaze you at how much stuff you’ve accumulated over the years.

Some of it might very well be important, but that doesn’t mean that your potential buyers should see it. When you have a lot of clutter, it shrinks the living space of the house.

It makes it look and feel cramped and smaller. Many homeowners get something called house blindness. They’ve lived in the home for so long with the same clutter that they don’t even really see it anymore.

But a stranger will always notice. So clean out your house and make the space as big as possible. The fourth tip is that if you have a pet, no one who walks through your house should be able to notice it exists.

That means no cat litter box, no dog to jump on anyone, no food sitting around in a dish. Your home should not have any pet odors. Having a clean house that’s odor free is a big selling point.

You don’t want to lose a possible deal just because they can smell your pet’s presence or your pet makes a bad impression. The fifth tip is to stage your home. You can hire a professional or you can do it yourself.

Stage your living areas in a way that shows off your home. You can rent furniture to make your home furnishings look good if you don’t use a stager. Someone who knows how to stage a house knows how to play up the best features of your home and knows what to bring in or get rid of to make the entire house appeal to a buyer.

A good real estate agent will know how to price your home correctly. If you’re selling your home yourself, you’ll have to understand how vital setting the right price is.

Sometimes homeowners have the mindset that they’ll set the price of the home higher than what the market value is so that they’ll have some bargaining room. That’s a very poor strategy because you’ll be creating a situation where you’re listing your home for more than it might be worth.

Potential buyers are looking for a deal. They don’t want to make an offer on a $400,000 home that’s only worth $375,000. Most buyers will move on without even looking at your home.

What you have to understand about how to price your home is that setting a certain price can determine the length of time your home will have to wait before it sells.

Any home that stays on the market for a long time can raise red flags with buyers. It can also lead to a situation where the longer your home is on the market, the more you’ll end up being forced to lower the price to an amount you’re reluctant to set it at.

You need to know the actual market value of your home. A three bedroom home in a popular California city will sell at a different price than a comparable three bedroom home in a rural area in Tennessee.

A homeowner may want to raise the price of the home beyond what it’s worth because they did some remodeling. You’ll have to be careful here, because while some upgrades can boost the home value, not all of them do.

An agent will know how to set the true market value with or without upgrades. Certain features have to be figured in when you’re considering how to price your home.

Along with the square footage, things like the number or bedrooms and the number of bathrooms the place has make a difference. While it might be tempting to think that you’re going to set a top tier price for your home, you have to be realistic.

This is an area that many homeowners fail at, but real estate agents excel at. Just because you think the home is perfect and has high potential to command more doesn’t mean it’s true.

One helpful thing that you can do to help you price your home to sell quickly at an amount that’s fair for you is to look at what the home sold for originally. If the home has changed owners a couple of times over the years, look for the amount that it sold at last time.

You can find this information online using housing marketing tools. Look at the price that the home was listed for, then see how much time it was between when it was listed and when it actually sold. This will help you see what a possible fair price could be that would move the home quickly off the market.

Selling a home doesn’t have to be a difficult situation. If you have a real estate agent, she’ll handle all the negotiating tactics and act as a buffer between seller and buyer.

However, you can successfully negotiate the sale of your own home by knowing a few tips ahead of time. Make sure that you have a strategy. This lets you plan in advance for the scenarios that might crop up.

You’ll be ready to handle anything or discuss anything that might arise during the negotiation process. You have to start by knowing what it is that you want out of your home when it comes to the price.

By knowing your bottom line for profits, this allows you to keep your mind on your goal rather than getting sidetracked by all the different tactics buyers will sometimes use.

Be prepared to defend your position. They may want an explanation for why you’ve set your price at the amount that it it’s at – or to know why you’re not offering certain concessions.

You can defend your position by doing your research ahead of time. Know what the market is doing. Understand if it’s a buyers’ or a sellers’ market. Have your home price set so that it fits the market and the neighborhood that you’re living in.

If you’re selling a home for $200,000 in a neighborhood where the highest home value is $150,000, that’s a poor strategy. You need to do your homework so that you’ll know how to correctly value your home.

You can do a market analysis, but you can also get the home appraised before the negotiations start. That way, you have proof on hand with what your home is worth and anything that needs to be taken care of first.

You might have a fixed price in mind when it comes to selling your home – but don’t be afraid to listen to the other side. By being willing to pay attention, you might end up with an even better deal.

Know ahead of time that it’s rare for both parties in a home sale to get exactly what it is they planned to get. The negotiation process works as a give and take and both sides need to be willing to make concessions.

Don’t try to hide the flaws in your home. A buyer knows that every home has flaws. Point yours out and either offer to fix those as part of the deal or take money off the asking price in exchange for him assuming the needed repairs once he’s the homeowner.

The first offer that you get might be a lot less than you’re expecting. This is simply the art of negotiation. Just make a counteroffer. Keep calm and keep your eyes on what it is that you want out of the negotiation and you should be able to get through it easily.