Selling your home and wondering how to make it worth more for resale?
Every real estate market behaves differently.
What expenditures yield the biggest return bang for your buck varies depending on the community.
But we can all agree on one thing selling your home in Maine?
Everyone wants to know what helps or hurts a home sale so they don’t waste time or money.
This blog posts drills down into the topic of how to make your home worth more, to sell for a higher price in shorter time.
In a small rural real estate market like most of Maine is, it is always easy does it making home selling adjustments.
Because assuming you have the funds to update the house for sale, what you funnel into a place does not automatically show up dollar for dollar and then some in the closing check proceeds. The more money you pour into a place could be in the wrong areas for return. Or there is a point where no matter how much extra cash you stash into the home for sale, it is wasted. Gone for good and down the drain without added any horsepower to the home’s resale value.
Lots of other homes for sale just like yours?
If you are the property owner selling a home in Maine, make sure to not over price it. The longer the place lingers on the market, like food, it goes bad. Real estate mold from hanging around hurts the value more than anything you will ever do to update a home. Make the home under the cross hairs clean as a whistle. Stage it for no clutter. Make it known across the land this one includes a quick occupancy.
Look at the home for sale from all four sides with a critcal eye and a clipboard.
Fill the driveway potholes and mow that grass to bring them in from the curb. But price is right. Nothing to stress more times to make it loud and clear that a realistic price is the cornerstone of a successful and profitable home sale. Nothing works better than bolting on an attractive price to cause a quicker, smoother real estate closing experience. Unless you want the house sale to take years to happen. Is the price tag figure inline with the current housing real estate market inventory?
Too many projects started and all those loose ends for a home buyer in Maine to absorb during the house tour.
The torn or missing faded flooring when you step into the entry. The missing shutter or broken window. Damage from pets using door trim for a scratching post. Smells where your buyer shifts over to breathing with an open mouth rather than through their nose. Those factors do hurt the sale. But the long list every home owner has tucked away inside their head that they dream someday about doing to the sticks and bricks. Time to scrap that to do list check out and complete any repairs already started just never completed.
Selling your home and trying to decipher what actually makes it worth more for resale?
Forget what was personally planned for tackling to feather the nest best for the rest of your hopefully short days of living in the home sweet home.
Once the decision to sell the house is made, stop the need to finish your home work assignment.
It’s pencils down and only do what will help the sale. A real estate professional with experience under his or her belt knows what works best or not so hot for expenditures.
Rather than give into the urge to complete what you thought the home needed all along to make it what you want it to be. Think customer. Think local real estate housing market today. Learn from a real estate professional what he or she says is the best return on your time and money to maximize what you do end up selling your home for today.
Remodeling for home resale, should you update the bathroom or replace the kitchen counter top?
In your price range it may be neither. The expectations for each price range bracket is different. For a home under $50,000, the granite or quartz counter top is not a consideration. For a farm listing, more than five acres is a given or stop calling it a farmstead.
On all the homes, tone down the colors. Does not have to be boring off white or light grey everywhere you crank your head to look. But the glow in the dark dining room walls a shade or two less electric will help. There is a reason that original paint color used was in the bargain bin and 90% reduced sticker priced. Ignoring the 5,6,7,8 correct dance steps to avoid stepping on buyer’s toes. More on reasons homes don’t sell from earlier popular real estate blog post.
Where should your roll up sleeve, best TLC efforts be plowed? What comes out of your wallet or purse when you open wide actually go? To do the most good, to get the best return renovating your homewhen seriously thinking of selling your house?
Selling your home and scratching your head on what makes it worth more for resale?
Ask a real estate professional.
They make their living knee deep in the market cycles.
The longer in business, the more they’ve seen a thing or two. In this housing market, what would they suggest. Not based on one from many hours or days away. Right here, up close and personal.
Tell me in the order of return on investment what is number one, two and down the sell your home list.
So the home owner can decide how much money and time they are willing to invest. Or to make sure they know the drill and the cost rather than just shooting into the dark. Not knowing for sure but hoping, crossing their fingers that this will help. I hope. Doing nothing when there is no leaking pipe or roof or missing glass to peeling paint could be best. Save your money that you put in hoping to get out at the closing.
In a four season rural market like most of Maine real estate is, practical trumps trendy.
True Mainers that have a handle on their finances, savings too socked away. This salt of the Earth property owner knows a new roof or one that does not leak is mentally weighted higher than a room or two of new light fictures.
Heating, roofing, siding, windows, plumbing and then moving on to space for the lifestyle of the number of folks living under that roof. Who buys your home depends on how versatile it is marketed. A first floor bedroom and extra bathroom for an elderly Mom or Dad is huge too. Being able to move in and not start being nickeled and dimed is a bonus too. Colors inside and out matter less than a sound property with good bones.
Houses that do not need immediate cash infusion is what home buyers seek.
The ones who are seriously tapped out on closing costs and down payment, insurance and 
property tax kitties for those monthly installments.
That segment of the housing audience wants a break financially from writing all those checks.
To take a break and to regroup.
Instead of here we go, hang on tight.
The start updating this, painting that and missing the luxury of getting estimates. When the house repair is in crisis mode and forget it. In the time consuming shopping around for any ASAP vital improvements they face as the new home owner.
A three bedroom home marketed as such. And not as two bedrooms with the extra den. The buyer seeing two bedrooms with a Jimmy and a Suzie in their family high tails it. Like stung by a bee or the end of a whip. Just because you use the house as a two bedroom with extra den or iin-home office limits your audience. Because too small is the first and last thing a buyer with a family figures before moving on. Screaming “NEXT” so another home candidate can wander down the cat walk. To strut it’s good, bad and ugly swagger hoping to get more than a sneak a peak.
Selling and buying a home in Maine is stressful.
Everything can start to look like a blur of more of the same expensive thing. Worried am I ever going to find true housing love causes buyers to panic. Especially for first time home buyers of houses in Maine. They want to stop renting, star owning. So anything a seller can do to a house that causes a relief smile is a welcome sight for sore eyes. If the buyer who toured a slew of homes and looks bleary eyed and worn to a frazzle, help them. Reassure them and weigh the pros and cons.
Make sure to listen as the real estate broker, agent, REALTOR and don’t waste their time.
Dragging them into homes that won’t fit makes the buyer tense and sellers who stayed up half 
the night to tidy them up very hot under the collar.
Not wasting a buyer or seller’s time starts and ends with listening.
Then apply the best real estate solution with the current inventory of properties.
Like buying a used, pre-owned car, all of us want something extra. To add to the basics and to enjoy as a perk. Already established flower gardens and landscaping helps the person decide this is the one for me. If they can see themselves on their knees digging in the dirt scratching the fertile Maine soil.
Rear stairways if you have them better be cleared out Mr Home Owner. The buyer wants to try out the navigation to tool around the home. If something keeps that from happening, they feel like part of the home is in the dark and missing.
Would you make the largest purchase bar none most of us ever undertake without peering into all the nooks and crannies? Me neither. Not from Missoui but we Mainers gotta be shown top to bottom and sideways a couple times. Have to know what do we have here to maybe buy and call our home. How does the home as a whole hit us? What’s lacking and can it be added and what will that end up costing is a worry.
If the furnace has been cleaned and here’s the paperwork to prove it then put the news in the home for sale write up.
That adds points for the buyer on the which one you gonna pick real estate cut of homes for sale. No broken or missing glass helps the sale move quickler and at a higher price point. A quick home occupancy and willingness to move quickly helps the length of the sale. The “we can move quickly” attitude makes your home more attractive to other home owners that scratch their neck and sigh. Saying with a frown “I don’t know if we can or if we want to be moving that fast Mr & Mrs, Miss..etc” or whatever title buyer considering the home.
Willingness to fix a few items in the job jar of the home for sale in Maine.
The ones your buyer not you were planning on performing. That improves the speed and financial return at the final closing paper shuffle. And all that signing that causes hand cramp. Being able to quickly let a buyer who has parents intown just for the afternoon tour the home they are considering purchasing. Work your hardest sellers to make it happen. Say sure, give me twenty minutes and come on over. No problem. Even when it is to drop everything to make sure the house for sale is ship shape.
You don’t want to waste buying selling opportunities that are not always the Monday through Friday nine to five kind.
Real estate brokers, agents, REALTORS work when other people don’t for a reason. Off hours are 
their gravy times to get results.
When you have your home listed for sale in Maine, living battle stations ready alert status pays dividends.
It’s part of the dog and pony routine.
Buyers pick those kind of homes to end up deciding that’s the one.
I’m done looking declared to all the friends, co-workers and family.
Over homes that are owned by sellers pretty independent and who mutter cool your jets.
We’ll get back to you in time about when to come through the door works best for us. For you to check the place out again or at all.
You snooze, you do lose those home buyers. Be helpful, stay ready to accomadate your home buying prospects when they want because waiting will lose them. They moved on quickly to other homes for sale in Maine where owners are not so rigid. Or that are empty and able to be shown with a moment’s notice.
What else when selling your home, what makes it worth more for resale in the small rural Maine real estate market?
Getting the idea it’s not just throwing money at updates but willingness to have it shown quickly 
in the instant open house on demand approach? That a quick possession date and being willing to consider the desire of the buyer, not just your own what works best. Yup, those attitudes help. Keeping the house free of slack and picked up, looking like its ready to go out on a date with the buyer. Putting your best foot forward always has its reward right?
The fixing hanging lose roof gutters, trimming around the trees and along the cellar foundation or around the garage improves your odss home sellers. Less repairs for the buyer who may not be so handy makes those concerns go away. Because they may not have time, or money or could think something little is way way bigger than it really is.
Tighten up the loose end slack around your home to make it worth more when selling your home.
Take the tour with a critical eye or borrow a friend or family members to make notes on a clipboard on the walk around inspection. You the owner often don’t even see the negatives or have learned to just accept them as not so big a deal. Your buyer does not feel that way on the first impression.
Missing door know, dead light bulbs, clutter on the steps heading upstairs or down into the basement. Attack those before the first buyer ventures in to sneak a peak. In small towns, buyers talk and the grapevine is lively. Word about how the first impression of this buyer is shared with every Tom, Dick and Harry. Whatever is circulated by the early buyer when the seller is not quite ready will be gospel as the local scuttle butt impression.
No matter what happens later on to fix the not quite up to snuff issues house for sale reputation. Whoever will listen, it’s spread the word good, bad or ugly. People don’t forget what they’ve heard for negative comments about a home for sale in Maine and they post it on social media, tell their friends in chit chat conversations.
