A room-by-room consultation
I’m not a decorator. I don’t know what color curtains are in right now. That’s why I bring in a professional interior designer to come to your house and go through it room by room.
We look at the things you could do to get the house ready to sell. That may mean moving furniture, taking some pictures off the wall, changing the lighting, or putting things away. We use what you already own whenever we can.
You’ve been living in this house. You have it arranged for the way you use it, and that makes sense. A buyer is walking in for the first time. I want them to be able to see the rooms, understand how they could use the space, and picture themselves living there.
Then we work through your budget
We take the list and match it up to your budget. You might have a $500 budget, a $50,000 budget, or no budget at all. Then we prioritize the recommendations based on your timeline and what you’re comfortable doing.
A lot of the things that can be done are free or low-cost. Moving a couch, clearing a counter, taking the magnets off the refrigerator, and getting the lighting right don’t require a major renovation. Sometimes a small cosmetic change is worth spending money on. Sometimes we can accomplish what we need with the things you already have.
I’m not coming in with an automatic recommendation to build a garage, add a deck, or rip out your kitchen. I want to look at your house and help you decide where your money would do the most good.
“You don’t have to do anything I tell you to do, but it’s my job to tell you all the things you could and should do to get your house sold for the most money.”
~Brian
Give buyers something to be excited about
People buy things with emotion, then justify their decisions with logic. Think about the last time you bought something you were excited about. You probably had a reason why that particular one was better than the others.
When you’re selling your house, there may be several other houses nearby with the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms in a similar price range. On paper, yours might have more square footage. But buyers are also responding to how the house feels when they walk through it. The lighting, the decor, and the way the rooms are arranged all contribute to that.
You want to give the buyer something to be excited about. You don’t want the greatest thing about your house to be that they got it cheap. I want the kitchen, the living space, the yard, or whatever is special about your property to give them a reason to want this house.
What if you’d rather leave it for the buyer?
A lot of people like the idea of doing nothing and taking a little off the price so the buyer can make the changes. I understand why that sounds easier. But the amount the buyer takes off their offer may not be the same as what it would cost you to do the work.
The buyer is thinking about living through the project, finding the people to do it, and paying for it after they move. They’re also comparing your house with other houses where the work is already done. Before deciding to leave everything as it is, I want you to understand what we could do and what it would cost.
You still get to decide. We may agree that certain work isn’t worth doing, or that your time and budget are better spent somewhere else. That’s why we go through the actual list for your house.
Help carrying out the plan
I don’t want to hand you a list and leave you to figure it all out. I have contractors and specialists I work with, and I help coordinate the work and the order it needs to happen.
I pay for the consultation. You decide which repairs and improvements you want to make, and you pay for that work. Before the photographer comes, we want the house ready to show everything we’ve worked on.
When people decide how much they want to offer, how they feel is influenced by what they see. What they see is influenced by what you’ve done or not done to the house. That’s why I take this part of the process so seriously.