Get your Calgary home ready for fall
Summer is now coming to a close soon in YYC and although this summer has been short, now is a good time to be thinking about home staging for your Calgary home for sale if it is still on the market. Homes Sold Beautifully Calgary Home Stagers and Design are the top rated home stagers in the area and we have some important points for you to consider ahead of preparing your home for the fall market.
So what should you be thinking about if you are going to be going on to the home sale market this fall in YYC? Here are some points for you to consider when selling your home in the autumn:
Hey Good Looking!
1-Curb appeal:
Keep those leaves cleaned up, get weeding and fertilizing! The leaves will soon start to fall, so get ready to keep your yard raked up. Now is the time to give your lawn a late summer/early fall fertiliser feed. Keep you lawn watered if the weather has been really hot or dry recently (dryness being a persistent lawn killer in Calgary). Pull up weeds, especially in flower beds and mulch if necessary with either brown or black mulch (not red mulch). Do not cut your grass too short, so that it can retain moisture, and consider leaving your bag off your lawn mower so that the clippings can also prevent moisture loss, so that your lawn can stay looking lush for as long as possible. Trim overgrown shrubbery and dead-head old flowers. Add a new front door welcome mat, and fall mum flowers for great looking photos for MLS.
2-Outdoor painting:
If your deck or porch has gotten quite parched and is peeling then now is the time to give it a bit of a light sanding and repaint or stain it. Same goes for your front door, give it a fresh coat of paint in a neutral shade, and dust/polish any outdoor lights. Repaint any peeling trim.
3-Maintenance:
Sweep your driveway of old dust and gravel. Power wash spider webs, dust off the exterior of the house and get your windows washed. Wash down patio furniture.
4-Seasonal items:
Do not put seasonal items in your fall MLS photos, like pumpkins, scarecrows etc. These will make your photos look dated online. Make sure there are not any leftover Christmas lights from the year before to spoil your pictures!
Things To Bear In Mind:
1-Fall is still a good time to sell your home, for many reasons. The kids are back in school and families are finished travelling for the summer, and people are getting back into their routines.
2-Less inventory. Less inventory means there is less competition for you!
3-Different buyers, different needs: As Scott McGillivray says ‘While families are more likely to make their move in the spring, millennials and empty-nesters usually swoop in a bit later in the year. They’re not the only ones, either: to avoid higher “on season” real estate rates, employers who need to relocate their workers often wait for the fall, when the market tends to cool down. These out-of-towners will probably need to get through the process quickly, too, which could mean a relatively speedy closing.” (http://scottmcgillivray.com/real-estate-investing/sell-house-fall-prepare/)
4-Stage your home!!! Lastly, bear in mind at all times, that you should stage, stage, STAGE!!! Sellers that make the effort to declutter, deep clean, make repairs, start packing boxes and stage their homes sell quicker, and for more money! A home has to look ready to be bought, so if you have not decluttered, prepared your home for viewing and done any necessary repairs, your home will not look ready for sale. Add flowers, accessories, good looking art work and bedding. Your home should be as beautiful as if it were having a ‘first date’–and you would make the effort for a first date wouldn’t you?
So no, the fall market is not too late to sell your home in Calgary, and to be competitive in the YYC real estate market, that means getting your home ready, polished and prepared for sale. As I always say, you are not selling the ordinary, you should be selling the extraordinary!™
All the best and good luck with selling your Calgary home this fall. If you are in need of home staging, we are always ready to help you with a home staging consultation or full staging for your home!
Sincereley,
Monique Shaw, CCSP
Lead Designer,
Homes Sold Beautifully Home Staging And Design
403-926-4603
www.HomesSoldBeautifully.com
Monique Shaw is a multi award winning home stager and designer in the Calgary, Alberta, Canada region. She has most recently been featured on the tv program Homes And Lifestyles show, recently showing on CTV.