If the ongoing seller’s market that has taken over the housing market has you interested in selling your home, you’re not alone. Home sales have shot up in the last couple years, and the price of homes along with them, making selling a house a tempting prospect. While many homes are going quickly, it doesn’t hurt to do everything you can to make sure your home is going to put you in the best position possible to bring in attractive offers. Hosting an open house is a great strategy for getting your home to sell quickly and at a good price. So what should you do when you want to host one? Here are some tips for hosting an open house.
Hire a Professional Stager
The whole point of an open house is to show your home off to the greatest advantage. That isn’t going to happen if your home is bare of furniture and decor. It’s also probably not going to work out if you just leave things as they have been when you’ve been living in the house either. One of the best things you can do to make your home look good during an open house is to hire a professional stager. Professional home stagers know some visual staging tricks that can really make a difference in your home’s presentation.
Tips for Hosting an Open House: Pick the Best Times
An open house is an open invitation for prospective buyers to come check out your home. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be careful about when you hold it. Have a clearly defined start and end time. You don’t want people wandering through at any time all day long. Beyond that, think carefully about when you want those start and end times to be. Weekends are usually best, since buyers are more likely to be off work and free to attend. You may find Sunday afternoons to be especially ideal, since sporting events tend to be on Saturdays, and people may have returned from church by that point. Speaking of sporting events, pay attention to major events during the time you want to schedule your open house. Avoid scheduling it during things like the Super Bowl or prominent holidays if you want to attract a lot of people.
Have Your Agent Conduct a Tour
You probably know your home better than anyone else. That doesn’t mean you necessarily know how to sell it though. For that reason alone, it’s best to have your agent conduct the tours of your home. Your agent has literally made it their business to know how to highlight your home’s most desirable features and how to put some of its flaws in a better light. They’ll also be in a better position to help prospective buyers feel more comfortable. No one wants to feel like they can’t express the way they really feel about a home they’re checking out because they’re concerned about hurting the owner’s feelings.
Tips for Hosting an Open House:: Prepare Refreshments
The people who are coming to see your home should be treated like guests. You want them to feel welcome and comfortable. Offering refreshments can help with that. It doesn’t have to be anything very intricate or overly fancy, but it should taste good and be thoughtfully presented. Toothpicks add detail to your presentation that will impress people. Beyond that, they make it easy to take the food you want without touching food that other people will eat. In today’s environment, that’s sure to be a plus.
Make Sure Your Home is Clean
It should go without saying, but making sure your home is clean before your open house is an absolute must. No one wants to tour a home that is cluttered or dirty, and it’s a sure way to give people the impression that your home is less valuable than it really is. Do yourself a favor and take the time to give your home a good, thorough decluttering and cleaning from top to bottom. Ideally, this should be done before your professional stager arrives and gets to work. Once your home has been deep cleaned, it should be much easier to keep it that way. That should make it a lot easier to give it a quick once over the day of your open house so it’s as clean as possible. Seems like too much to add to your plate? Find a good house cleaning service to handle it for you.
Hosting a successful open house can go a long way towards making sure that you get good offers for your home, and quickly. Just remember, simply having one isn’t enough to get the benefit from it. You’ll need to do it right if you want it to be a success. Considering how tough it can be to continue to pay for your old home once you have a new one you’re also paying for, making sure you get offers for the home you’re trying to sell is always going to be a good thing.
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