10 Things You Must do to Sell Your House Fast & For the Highest Price
Want to Sell Your House Fast and for the Highest Price?
Then Here are the 10 Things You Must Do!
If you are like most sellers, the two biggest questions you have are “how long is it going to take to get my house sold?” and “how do I sell my house fast for the highest price?” The answers to these questions will vary from house to house, and market to market, but there are proven practical steps that you can take to ensure your home will sell fast and for the highest price.
To help you get this right, we have created a list of the top 10 things you must do to sell your home fast and for the highest price. So before you put up that for sale sign or pack that first box, get to work on these 10 things!
The Top 10 Things You Must Do!
1. Price It Right
The number one factor in selling a home is the initial asking price, so we are going to help you avoid the most common pricing mistakes.
When a home first enters the market, it typically gets a lot of activity because it is a “new listing.” But if your asking price is too high, you squander that new listing excitement and have just doomed yourself to price cuts and a lengthy sales process.
Pricing a home correctly requires research. A real estate agent can help you with statistics, data, and can even recommend an asking price but understand that they may be telling you what you want to hear just to get the listing. Then, when it doesn’t sell, they will recommend lowering the price. That is not a winning strategy and will lead to wasted time and a lower sales price.
To avoid this, you need to do a little bit of research. Using the comparable sales information provided by the real estate agent, you need to go look at your competition. You want to get a good feel of the condition and desirability of comparable homes near yours that have recently sold and for sale. Make notes on what you liked, did not like, and how it compares to your home. Then use the information to come up with an asking price that is just slightly below the market value of your home. If this is a challenge for you, seek help from family and friends. The key to success is honestly appraising the desirability and condition of your home versus the competition.
When deciding upon an asking price for your home, keep in mind that overpricing a home creates disappointment. Pricing a home slightly below market value creates excitement and bidding wars.
2. Clean and Shine
Is your home clean and organized? I mean really clean, as in eat off the floor clean! If you want to sell your home fast, it needs to be cleaned from top to bottom. A clean home is inviting and makes people want to stay. A home that is dirty or unorganized makes people uncomfortable and want to leave as fast as possible.
To sell fast and for the highest price, you need to give your house a deep cleaning, inside and outside. This includes windows, floors, light fixtures, window blinds, porch, patios, and appliances. If you have the time and ability to do a thorough cleaning, great you can save some money. But if not, then hire a professional to clean and shine the home. Once done, you need to keep it that way until the home is sold and closed. This is money well spent.
3. Create a Great First Impression
The moment a potential buyer pulls up to the curb, they start judging your home based upon what it looks like from the outside. There is never a second chance to make a great first impression, so you need to ensure the outside is spruced up and inviting. It doesn’t matter if the inside of your home is beautiful if the potential buyer is turned off by the condition outside.
To make a great first impression, you should plant some brightly colored flowers, replace any dead shrubs, mulch the planting beds, trim the trees, cut the grass, clean the yard, and touch up the exterior paint as needed. It is also essential to make people feel safe and welcome as they walk up to the house, so verify that the exterior lights work and are turned on, the walkway is clear and in good repair, and the front entrance is visible.
These little things will go a long way in creating a great first impression and help you sell your home fast and for the highest price.
4. Repair Damage
Today, the average home buyer is working 40 to 60 hours a week and has precious little free time—most have no interest in buying a problem home. If your goal is to sell the home fast for the highest price, you need to make sure the home is in good condition and repair anything that is not working correctly.
It is important to keep in mind the items that concern a home buyer the most and make sure they in good condition. These include:
Roof
Foundation
Plumbing system
HVAC system
Electrical
Appliances
Safety systems
You do not need to replace the item if it is functioning properly and has not reached the end of its useful life, but you will need to fix code violations or anything that could be potentially dangerous.
5. Fresh Coat of Paint
Paint is one of the least expensive improvements you can do, provides the biggest payback, and will help you sell the house fast. It is also one of the easier do-it-yourself jobs that if you are modestly handy, and have the time, you can save a lot of money by doing the work yourself. So if your paint is old and the walls a bit scuffed up, you should paint the walls and repair any wall damage. You should also repaint walls that have strong personal colors. Think of the walls in your home that are orange, red, pink, or green.
When selling a home, you want it to appeal to the greatest number of people, so paint with neutral colors like beige, light gray, and soft whites.
6. Light and Bright
People love a light and bright house, so we will give them what they love. This is one of the easiest and least expensive things you can do to get your house sold fast and for the highest price, and it is a simple do-it-yourself project.
The first thing you need to do is make sure every light in the house functions and change out dead or low wattage bulbs with new bright high light output LED bulbs. While you’re at it, clean the bugs and dust off of the glass globes/lenses so the light can shine through.
The second thing you will do is even easier but just as important. The day you put the home up for sale, and every day until the home is sold, before you leave the house for the day, spend 5 minutes raising the window blinds, pull back all of the curtains, and turn on all of the lights. The only exception to this rule is if the view from the window is undesirable, in which case leave the curtains/blinds down but make sure the lights are on.
7. What’s That Awful Smell?
Those are the absolute last words you want to hear from a potential buyer and a definite deal killer. A person’s sense of smell will create some of our strongest reactions and memories, good and bad.
To sell a house fast and for the highest price, you need to ensure your home smells great. Think of fresh-baked bread, cookies, roses, 
eucalyptus, or the clean scent of lemon. If your home is clean, bright, and smells great, it will sell fast!
Unfortunately, the opposite is true. If the home has an unpleasant odor, it will be very difficult to sell. The most common unpleasant odor in our homes is from our loving pets. Let’s face it, all pets have accidents and accidents can create an odor that persists. We live with our pets, so we tend to become nose-blind to these odors. These lingering pet odors will make it very hard to sell and may significantly reduce the value of the home by $20,000 or more (Time).
You need to make sure your home smells great. So if you have pets or are not sure how your home smells, ask close friends to visit and perform a smell test. If there is even a hint of an unpleasant odor, make sure it is eradicated and replaced with a good scent.
If possible, during the first 10 days your home is on the market you should bake bread, cookies, or create another pleasant scent that greets potential buyers as they enter your home.
8. Set the Stage
Staging a home is simply a method of decorating your home to showcase its best assets, impress buyers, and sell it fast for the highest price. Have you ever been to a new home model that has been staged? Making your home look like a model can be difficult when you are living in it, but if you follow the steps in this article, you will only need to do it for a short time.
The first thing to know about staging is less is more. You will need to remove EVERYTHING from your countertops (bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry) except a few decorations that add to the appeal of the room. Place everything else inside the cabinets; this includes the coffee maker, toaster, hairbrush, rollers, lotions, cream, toothbrush, and anything else on the countertops. Do the same in the bathtubs, showers, tops of dressers, and all other areas of the home. Not sure what you should do? Go tour the model of a local home builder to see what they did – and copy it.
Every day the home is on the market, you will take out what you need, use it, and then place it back inside the cabinets. For the shower and tub, you can use a small toiletry basket that you take to the shower and then put it back under the sink when you are done using it.
Yes, this is a huge hassle, but just remember a staged home sells for about 6% more on average. To sell your house fast for the highest price, you need to set the stage. You can do this for a little while!
9. How Much is a Picture Worth?
Today, potential home buyers begin their search on the internet, and they spend most of their time looking at pictures. Great pictures have become so important, that having professional pictures that highlight the features of your home can help you sell the house 32% faster when compared with poor or even average quality pictures.
You want your pictures to be taken by a professional photographer that specializes in real estate. They will have the tools and experience to capture pictures from the perfect angle to best display the features of your home. Many professional real estate photographers can also create a virtual tour of your home and drone shots that show your home from the air.
If you are listing your home with a real estate agent, most full-service agents will include obtaining professional photographs as part of their service. If you plan on going the For Sale by Owner route, it is highly recommended that you spend the money on professional photographs.
10. Make Your Home Available
Your home must be seen before you can get it sold. In other words, ensure you make it accessible to the potential buyers and in show-ready condition for them to see the home on their schedule, which will most likely be when it is most inconvenient for you.
We get it. It is a huge hassle and inconvenience to drop everything at a moment’s notice and get out of the house, so it can be shown. The stress and hassle factor is compounded when there are small children or pets in the house. That is why we recommend you make a plan on how to deal with this before you put the house on the market. This may include arranging for the children to stay at a friend’s or grandma’s house on the weekend or boarding the pets. This is one of those items where you need to plan for success or prepare for failure.
Conclusions
As you near the end of this article, you probably figured out that the key to “Sell Your House Fast” for the highest price is spending the time, money, and effort on the front end preparing the home.
There’s a lot to do, so to help you stay organized during this process, we have created the Ultimate Guide for Preparing Your Home to Sell Free Checklist. This guide will walk you through every step, week by week, and ensure you sell your house fast for the highest price. Download your free checklist today – it is free and registration is not required.
There is a Faster and Easier Way!
If you are short on time, money, or just do not want to deal with the hassle of selling your home, there is a faster and easier way—sell to a home cash buyer like OutFactors. Our company has many home cash buying programs that are designed to “Sell Your House Fast” the easy and stress-free way. Selling your home to a professional home cash buyer, like OutFactors, is very quick and simple. At OutFactors, we buy houses for cash and usually close in 10 days or less.
To sell your house fast, all you need to do is answer four simple questions. Within a few hours, OutFactors will send you a great cash for house offer for your Dallas Fort Worth area home – no repairs, upgrades, or cleaning needed. We will then schedule a time to do a quick inspection and complete the paperwork.
When you sell your house fast to OutFactors, you do not need a real estate agent. That means no hefty fees and potentially more money in your pocket. You also get to choose the closing date, and with our sell and stay leaseback program, you decide when you will move out. One of the biggest benefits of selling your home to a company like OutFactors is how simple we make it to sell home as-is.
You Can Easily Sell Your Home for the Highest Cash Price!
If you want to sell your house fast in the Dallas Fort Worth area for the highest cash price, then we invite you to visit OutFactors.com or call 800-420-7030 for an immediate cash for house offer. At OutFactors, we offer some of the highest cash for house prices without the pressure. Take your time and decide when you are ready – we will be here when you need us!
OutFactors is a local Dallas Texas-based company that has been in business since 2001. We are proud to be managed by a Texas licensed real estate professional and are BBB accredited with an A+ rating. We are the home cash buyer with great customer reviews and we put everything in writing using Texas standard contract forms. Want to sell but stay living in the home you love? Then ask about our Sell and Stay Program. The people at OutFactors are super easy to talk to and will answer all of your questions.
We hope this article was informative and helpful. If you have any questions or would like additional information, we invite you to contact us at OutFactors.com or watch some of our 2-minute explainer videos that provide information about our cash home buying programs.
OutFactors
539 West Commerce Street
Suite 1205
Dallas, Texas 75208
Contact@OutFactors.com
www.OutFactors.com
(800) 420-7030
How to Sell Your House Fast for Highest Price | OutFactors — Dallas Fort Worth, Texas
