DeClutter, DeClutter, DeClutter

Have you ever looked at a picture associated with a listing and thought, “Wow they have a lot of stuff”?
You might have even thought, “What a mess.” Another frequent phrase is, “how do people live like that?” The subliminal message for some, and the obvious message for others is, this must be a very small house. When a house is jammed wall to wall with counter tops full, it sends a message to the potential buyer. The message is, keep looking this place is a too small. When people get close to buying a house they begin to picture where their furniture will go in the new home. If there are “things” everywhere, it will complicate this process in their minds.

Storage Unit

Some sellers think, why would I get a storage unit? That is an expense I can’t afford right now.  With the average cost of a nice size storage space at about $100 a month, how can a cluttered home owner not afford to get a storage unit? The surprise for some home owners is how much better they feel with half of their furniture and “etc”. is actually removed from their home. Another surprise is how well they get along without all of the excess “stuff” in their home. The difficulty as an agent is trying to convince some people that their home will look better and sell faster when it is decluttered. We have some video’s that we will gladly loan out to help people. They will help sellers better appreciate the difference between a clean organized home and a borderline hoarders home. The difference is night and day, and difficult for even the most stubborn cluttered home seller to see.

Enlarge Your Home

Obviously you can not enlarge the size of your home, but it is possible to make it seem larger. This may require a little experimenting, arranging rooms in different ways to come up with the most desirable placement. With a lot of the excess furniture in storage it is much easier to experiment. For ideas on how to do this you can contact a home staging person, they do not charge very much for helping you place your furniture in the most effective way. There are also a lot of shows on television each week, that have some great ideas on maximizing the space you have. So while it is not possible to make your home bigger, with a little work, you can sure make it feel bigger. This concept also applies to closets and pantries. When a potential home buyer opens the pantry door, and it is an unorganized mess, they begin thinking, maybe we need a house with a bigger pantry? The same principle applies to linen closets. Just because the door is closed doesn’t mean the potential buyer is not going to open it.

This blog post was shared by Kevin Richey.
View Kevin’s website HERE.