Moving Week- Day 4 Leaving for a showing

If you miss any of the posts this week you can catch up here. We've talked about supplies needed for moving, Pinterest ideas I tried out while moving, and general tips and tricks.

Today we're talking about what to do when you are leaving the house for a showing. 

When we moved our Realtor was amazing! She got us an experienced home stager and a great photographer for the pictures of the house for online. I would HIGHLY suggest getting a stager. You can tell a huge different in a home that is staged. We spent 2 months getting our home ready to sell. Well, technically we spent about 6 months because we started big home renovations the October before we put our house on the market for that reason. We put down sod, fresh flowers, and mulch in the yard as well as painted the house. We scrubbed every corner until it sparkled. We had about 30 showings before we finally got our second offer and it officially sold. All in all it was on the market three months before we were under contract for good. (We got one offer very quickly but it fell through)  With a baby it was hard to keep it in showing condition. Here are a few tips that we did*

This is PB outside hanging out while we worked on the exterior of the house. She just stayed in the shade on a blanket all day. 

• Make your home a shell. Take down your personal effects and things specific to you. You want the buyers to see themselves in your house. This means knick knacks, pictures, and extra furniture into storage.
• Make sure your lawn is not over grown and your driveway and front porch are power washed and cleaned. I viewed two homes that were the same home plan in two different neighborhoods. The outdoor appearance (and cleanliness inside) totally made me hate the unkempt house and only later did I realize that they were the same floor plan. 
• Make sure your carpets are clean and vacuumed. Yucky carpets are a huge turnoff.
• Do laundry often so that it does not get piled up in the hamper. Even when dirty clothes are in a hamper if there are a lot of them it stinks! 
• Before you go to bed each night make sure that your house is in showing condition so you will have less to do if there is a showing the next day.
• Leave out only a few toys that can be hidden in a discreet place. We kept PB's in our TV stand and behind the couch where they could be easily shoved away. 
• Great places to take kids while you're waiting for a showing to be done are a fast food restaurant with a play place, a playground, Target, or a museum. 
• Make sure your house smells like coming home. In the mornings we would make our buyers cinnamon rolls and during the day it was cookies. I have also heard of put vanilla in a warm stove.
• We made an inviting table to draw their eye when they came in. On the kitchen table I put out a fresh table cloth with flowers (sometimes fresh- usually fake), the home brochures, the warm cookies, a decorative container with ice and mini bottles of water, with a sign that said "Please Help Yourself" in fancy writing in a cute frame. 

I wish I had a picture of the last suggestion but we were usually rushing out of the house and did not have time to do anything but get our seats buckled and leave!

I hope some of these tips helped. Do you have any home prep tips for showings?!

Tomorrow, on our last day were are talking about leaving our homes and neighborhoods. 

*Note: I'm not sharing staging tips I was given by our Realtor and home stager. I consider those the intellectual property of our home stager and Realtor. These are tips that I found on my own, were suggested from family and friends, or I noticed while viewing homes as a buyer.