You are about to put your home on the “shelf” for sale along with other houses in your general price range and area. All the houses on the shelf are saying, “Pick me! Pick me!” Which houses get picked depends on what a buyer thinks about the price and appeal of the house. It does NOT depend on what you need to pay Stanford for tuition for your first-born.

Your Realtor® can help you both price your house and make it as appealing as possible. I am using “house” instead of “home” intentionally. It is now a product to sell. What do the pros do? To find out, go to a big builder’s subdivision and look at their model home(s). The way the house looks from the street (curb appeal), its condition, the colors, the amount of furniture, etc., is extremely important. These builder’s houses might even be on the shelf right next to yours.

Make your house is the prettiest one on the shelf. Hire a landscaper to trim back overgrown shrubs, spread mulch and keep your lawn green and trimmed. Paint, refinish or replace the front door. Remove the screen door. Update the exterior light fixtures. Paint the trim and garage door. Clean the windows. Add some new flowering plants in pots on the front porch, steps or walk. Power wash the front porch, walkways and driveway. Have the roof cleaned.

The garage should contain the appropriate number of cars, a broom, and a rake. That’s it. Nothing else.

A builder’s model has NO CLUTTER! Rent a storage unit and put into it everything you will not need in the next 90 days. Everything. You want nothing on the kitchen or bathroom counters except maybe decorative candles. Eat out often, because your kitchen will need to be spotless after every meal. Take down family pictures so buyers can see THEIR family there.

Clean everything…particularly the kitchen and baths. Then, keep them squeaky clean. Paint only if it can’t be cleaned, and use neutral colors. DON’T WALLPAPER ANYTHING! In most cases, wallpaper in a house is equivalent to milk on the shelf that is past the “Use By” date. People will pick another one off the shelf just like yours that is not wallpapered.

Let the light shine in! Open drapes and curtains, turn many lights on, and, if possible, have a cheerful fire burning in the fireplace. (Don’t leave a wood fire unattended though!)

Your house not only needs to look good on the shelf, it needs to be on the easiest shelf for buyers to see. Make it easy to show at most any time with little notice, and with a Realtor® MLS lockbox. If you have mean dogs, farm them out to the in-laws. If you have nice dogs, farm them out to friends. You can’t smell dog or cat in your house, but others can. Have no showing roadblocks such as 24-hour notice, shown through listing agent only, etc. If you make the showing difficult or uncomfortable, you have put your house on the top shelf and no one will bother to climb up there to look at it.

Or, you can forget all of the above advice and just put your home in “as is” condition in the bargain shopping cart, and eventually sell it for what you paid for it ten years ago.

Good luck!

By Gary Taylor, CRB, GRI, RE/MAX Equity Group, Inc
Gary Taylor is a managing principal broker with RE/MAX Equity Group, and holds the CRB and GRI educational designations. He is the 2007 PMAR Realtor® of the Year.

For additional real estate resources, visit www.pmar.org.