Summary: An open house is crucial for attracting buyers. Maximize your home’s appeal by keeping it neutral, clean, and clutter-free. Boost curb appeal, consider professional staging, and work with a skilled real estate agent to ensure a successful event.
Main Points:
- Neutral and Inviting: Remove personal items and keep spaces open and bright.
- Deep Cleaning: Clean thoroughly, focusing on often-overlooked areas.
- Curb Appeal: Enhance your home’s exterior with landscaping and touch-ups.
- Consider Home Staging: Professional staging can make a significant difference.
- Work with a Real Estate Agent: Get personalized tips and support for a successful open house.
An open house is an excellent way to attract several potential buyers and move the process of selling your home forward. These events can also help to lower the number of individual showings, reducing disruption for you and your family.
Of course, the goal of an open house is to put your best foot forward — to show prospective buyers that your home can be a great home for them, too.
So, how can you make a positive and lasting impression with your open house? What should you do to convince visitors that this is the place they want to live?
Keep reading for our suggestions on how to prepare for an open house to find a great buyer and sell your home.
Open House Tips for Sellers
1. Aim for Neutral and Beautiful
You want visitors to easily see themselves and their families living in your home during an open house. That means you shouldn’t put too much of your own personality and style on display.
While you can’t and shouldn’t change everything in your home — it’s not practical — you should make the rooms and spaces open, bright, and welcoming. That means removing things like personal items and leaving just a handful of more neutral decorations that help provide pops of color.
Realtor.com makes a few useful suggestions for preparing for an open house, including:
- Keep surfaces as clutter-free as possible, especially in the kitchen.
- Strategically place mirrors within rooms to make them appear both larger and brighter.
- Limit the amount of furniture and other items in each room.
- When you move furniture, decorations, and other personal items out of the main areas of your home, box them up and neatly place them in your attic, basement, or, ideally, at a storage unit away from your home.
- Move the remaining furniture close to walls whenever possible, to give the impression of additional space.
- Resist the temptation to store the items you remove in closets, as most open house visitors will want to gauge the available closet space.
- Similarly, declutter your cupboards and other storage spaces.
- Add neutral but attractive touches, like fresh flowers or even snacks and appetizers.
2. Deep Cleaning Pays Off
Even if guests at an open house are fine with a little clutter or dust in their own homes, they don’t want to see it when they tour another property. You can either deep clean yourself or hire a cleaning service and other professionals to do things like:
- Clean all the areas you may not get to during regular cleaning, like baseboards, closets, and any other hard-to-reach or less-visible areas.
- Shampoo and deep clean carpets.
- Clean windows, especially those that are hard to reach (such as second-floor windows in an open entry area).
The cleaner your home can be, the better. Give potential buyers as few reasons as possible to hesitate or pick on flaws.
3. Remember the Importance of Curb Appeal
The very first thing buyers will see is the outside of your home. From your front door to the landscaping, curb appeal is crucial.
It’s often worth it to get a landscaping service to beautify your lawn, trees, and other plants. Power washing your home, touching up or repainting faded or chipped paint, and freshening up your front door are all good ways to boost curb appeal.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to pick up on all the flaws present or to tell what is or isn’t important to potential buyers. This is just one example of an area where a real estate agent can use their knowledge and experience to help you stage a more successful open house.
4. Think About the Benefits of Home Stager
Professional home staging isn’t a requirement for an open house, but it can help throughout the process of selling your home.
Professional home stagers offer various service levels, which can make it easier to align with your budget and your own desire to personally stage your home. You can have a professional simply make suggestions, bring in furniture and accessories for some rooms, or stage your entire home.
5. Get Support and Assistance from an Experienced Real Estate Agent
When you host an open house, there are many issues and opportunities specific to your home that are impossible to cover in a more general guide. The right real estate professional can take that extra step, providing specific open house tips that lead to interested buyers.
Nikki Lagouros is Northern Virginia’s No. 1 Selling Agent for a reason. Get in touch to learn how Nikki can help you with everything from staging an open house to closing the deal and selling your home!