It takes teamwork to prep a house for market

If you want to get the best possible outcome when selling your home, you should stop for a hot minute and take stock. Take a good look inside and outside.

Take pictures and make notes about each room, focusing on the décor, the condition, the architecture. Basically, document the good, the bad and the ugly.

Next you need to assemble your sales team.

This includes all of your co-habitational family members, roommates, boarders and/or couch surfers. There should be a “ring leader” who champions the task of going through each room and ruthlessly picking it apart top to bottom. He or she should decide what your team needs to do.

Here’s a suggestion for how to sort out the actions needed to get your property camera ready, which is the ultimate goal.

Identify what you need to pack: This is a pretty easy choice. Do you have things in any of your rooms, or around your grounds, that don’t add to their emotional appeal? Pack them up.

Identify what you need to organize: Are there things that need to be better organized to present a better image of what that room is all about? Do you need to collect all the books from the tops of dressers and the floor next to the bed? Do you need to pull down all of the random teenager posters and pick one wall to have a single piece of signature art?

Add that to your list of things to do, decide how to fix it, and assign someone the task and the timeline.

Identify what you need to paint: Are there hints of blackish discoloration around your vents? Has the dog used his paws to rip the paint off the back door trying to get outside?

A new coat of paint can cover a multitude of sins accumulated over the years and make it fresh for the new owners. Add that to someone’s list of things to do. And add a due date.

Identify what you need to replace: Here comes the hard and more expensive part. Is your kitchen totally out of date? Is the grout between your counter’s white tiles so gouged from years of cleaning that it catches every crumb and spot of grime?

You might choose to replace your kitchen counters with a more modern material, which of course comes at a price for both the slab and the installation.

Take a hard look. Take pictures. Make decisions. Assign accountability. Do the hard work. Get the best result possible.

Leslie Sargent Eskildsen is an agent with Realty One Group West. She can be reached at 949-678-3373 or leslie@leslieeskildsen.com.

Source: Orange County Register