National Lumber's Blog

Getting ready to show your house for sale?

One thing about being in the retail business is that you move a LOT! After 15 moves and selling most of my houses myself, I consider myself as someone that knows how to prepare a house to look like a home to your prospects. Simply put, but effective, here are my tips:

• Touch up the exterior landscaping to make it bright, neat, colorful and inviting. $500 will buy you new plants, shrubs, colorful throw pillows and a new bench for the yard.
• Repaint your entrance door and door jambs to make it inviting.
• De-clutter your interior, get rid of your knick-knacks, refrigerator pictures and everything you can on your countertops.
• Get your house interior professionally cleaned (unless you are good enough to shine it up by yourself, especially the kitchen and bathrooms.)
• Paint the interior rooms and ceilings wherever they need brightening up.
• Add flowers and plants to the interior
• Hire a professional stager if you can to give you another perspective. If that’s not economically possible, bring in a friend who has the “touch” for interior design based on their own home.
• Clean up your garage and basement by bringing all of the extra stuff to charity resale operations like Goodwill or Salvation Army. The tax credit will be worth much more then what you’d get at a garage sale.

Everyone likes to look at a clean shiny, uncluttered and welcoming home. Do the work before you show your place and I guarantee you that the time, effort, and cost will come back to you by selling faster and getting the price it’s worth. Make people want to buy your place because they fall in love with it.

Steve Linsky
Marketing and Sales Specialist
Green Initiatives Coordinator
National Lumber