How to prepare your house for sale during lockdown
Yo-yo lockdowns aren’t exactly conducive to selling a house. It’s not an essential service, which puts your selling plans on hold for weeks (or months). But the snap and extended lockdowns across Australia don’t have to pause your plans. A lot of work goes into selling a house – the auction or private sale is just the end of a long journey. Because properties are selling faster (and higher) than ever, the pre-appraisal steps become even more critical.
Lockdowns offer a window of time to work through all the essential steps of selling your home (for well above your asking price). Spread out these tasks across the week and you’ll have a big project to keep you occupied through the lockdowns. Once everything reopens, you’ll be ready to sell your house, in the most popular selling season: spring.
Declutter, deep clean & DIY
While it’s tempting to jump straight into the property report and appraisals, there are some other things you can turn your attention to today. Have you started decluttering your house? Deep cleaning and cosmetic fix ups? Booking in tradespeople for maintenance and touch-ups when lockdown is over?
While it’s confronting, start with your biggest, most time-consuming tasks. Go through all your belongings and decide what you’ll pack, throw out, and donate. Start with one room at a time. Declutter and clean, then move onto the next.
This’ll give you a psychological ‘win’ tick on your moving to-do list.
Decide what DIY tasks and touch-ups you feel comfortable with. Some ideas include paintwork, tidying up the garden, furniture makeovers, installing shelves, retiling the bathroom, replacing tapware and handles, hanging new curtains, paving the garden, tiling a kitchen splashback, and repainting fences and floorboards. Buy products online that’ll help with your DIY tasks.
There will undoubtedly be tasks that are best left to the professionals, so make a list of tradespeople to handle the rest. Reach out to them first to slot into their busy work scheduling.
The idea is to get your house to a point where you can move swiftly once the lockdowns end and leverage the spring selling season.
Map out your selling plan
Get clear on all the steps you need to take from here. Talk to a financial advisor, as well as your family. While you might not be able to move the needle yet, it’s important to get your head across all the steps ahead.
Find out what your property is worth
Now, for the exciting part, the property report and appraisals. Use Agent Select’s free, independent service to help you find the top two or three real estate agents and negotiate the most desirable terms to sell your house.
Click here or the link above to find the value of your property
It’s a targeted algorithm that does all the research for you, without inundating you with hundreds of calls from agents, like other comparison websites do. Make an informed, empowered decision with Agent Select on your side of the fence.
Agent Select rebalances the power disparity, giving you all the resources you need to sell your home above the asking price, in the most enjoyable, stress-free way. Educate yourself about real estate agent fees and commissions and use the house selling calculator to see what you can expect for the sale.
Where to next?
Once you learn about the value of your house, you can realistically explore your lifestyle options. Are you ready for a change of scenery or suburb? Is it time to downsize or try a new style of living? These are important questions to ponder, especially while you have the time during lockdown. This isn’t just about selling your house. It’s an opportunity to enter an exciting new chapter of life. Let yourself imagine.
Partner with a team who can handle all the steps in your downsizing journey, contact Homesuite. To find the top three real estate agents for you, visit Agent Select.
Lockdown just got super productive for you.
This is a sponsored article produced in partnership with Agent Select.