Category: Moving

Managing the House Selling Process with Kids, Pets and Other Chaos.

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I get asked this a lot.

How do you manage house showings with three dogs, two kids, a job, a husband? It’s not easy, but with some planning and foresight you can survive it with WINE.

WINE is the answer … okay well maybe AFTER you’ve sold your home. Clean first, wine later.

Serial Mover Pro Tips – Showings.

  1. Realize you currently don’t live in your home, you live in a show home version of your home. Take a weekend before you list your house and visit some show homes or open houses in higher end areas. No one really lives there, and it won’t really seem like you do either. Once you have that firmly planted in your mind you can set your expectations accordingly.
  2. If you can leave town for a few weeks with kids and pets (and husbands) it’s not a horrible idea. This will save you countless hours of cleaning and re-staging your home after your children have ravaged it.
  3. If you can’t leave then you will have to be in ‘constantly ready for a showing mode’ which means: dishes always put away, laundry caught up, toy room tidy. If you spend an hour every night before bed just putting daily items away it will really help your morning.
  4. Floors, bathrooms, kitchen will need to be wiped down, moped, vacuumed everyday – I’m sorry. Especially if you have kids/pets these are the areas that will need the most attention.
  5. I have three adorable (HUGE) dogs. They smell less adorable. I use Sydney Hale Room Spray’s as a secret weapon of dog smell masking. Even if you don’t have dogs they are amazing.
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  6. Don’t forget the yard. Recently a huge wind storm knocked an old wasp nest on to our front porch – not something you’d want a would-be home buyer to encounter as their first impression.
  7. Meals. While you’re showing you will want to avoid cooking with smelly items as food smells linger. No curry, garlic or even (gasp) bacon. For now, not forever – promise!
  8. Understand the selling process will take time. You could be at this cleaning routine for a few months (not usually everyday). The most showings I personally had was around 32, in 30-days – which was A LOT for us. The home was historical so I believe we had a lot of people just wanting to see the home – not necessarily buy the home. IMG_7194HDR- copy
    I actually still really miss this house!

I would love to hear other tips on managing this stressful phase of moving, so if you have some – send them over to me as you know I’m a serial mover so I’m bound to be back here in the near future.

House selling preparation: pro tips from a serial mover.

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There is a ton of websites out there with sage house selling and staging advice. I’ve sold in total eight of my own houses (and two for family). By selling I mean sale readiness, staging and ‘while selling’ maintenance. I am not a real estate agent by any means and do recommend you hire a professional to help you list and market your home.

The sale prep and staging, well that’s on you, the homeowner.

2 Months Out from Listing.

  1. Take inventory of the things in your home that need fixing. That leaking faucet, that cupboard door that doesn’t sit right, that loose bathroom knob … and fix it. All of it. Buyers want move-in ready, not a laundry list of fix-it projects.
  2. Consider hiring a home inspector to do a pre-inspection on your home. This will cost money; however, it is good to know ahead of time what barriers may lay between you and a clean sale. A home inspector will provide you with that laundry list of items that need repair – items that buyers will usually ask you to repair anyway.
  3. The great purge. Garage stacked with junk? Kids toy rooms overflowing? Closets stuffed to the brim? Going through these areas is going to take time – but I promise it’s worth it. Not only will you have less stuff to move, but your house look better to prospective buyers.

1 Month Out from Listing.

  1. Paint. Have red walls in your bedroom that seemed like a good idea at the time? Paint those now. Buyers will often have a hard time looking past really customized features or design elements. Think light, bright and modern. Grey and Greige (Grey-Beige) is quite popular and will make a really neutral backdrop to showcase your space.  Some of my most favourite neutral paint colours are below.

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2 Weeks Out from Listing.

Staging.

My husband and I always make a joke that this phase is the part where you want to make your house look like ‘someone could’ live there but that someone isn’t you, or your kids and pets. These are my kids’ rooms; clearly they do not actually live there (not around showing times anyway!).

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Don’t forget closets, cupboards, and drawers. You can’t simply just stuff everything in a closet because buyers will look in closets, drawers, cupboards, and storage areas. Minimize the amount of stuff you have hiding in there and make it look well organized. This is my closet (in the last house) staged, certainly not how I live in the everyday.

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You are basically creating a life for someone who could/would live in your home. How would they live in this house, how would they decorate, what sofa would go there? You have to really paint a picture as to what life is like in your home. Not every-day messy floors, oh-my-god is that dog pee or water kind of life, but a fantasy life where everything is clean and perfectly magazine worthy.

You’re really kind of selling, your life in this home – which should be THEIR NEW HOME.

1 Week Out from Listing.

Clean and I mean everything.

Wipe those walls down, baseboards, dust, carpets … the works. If you can wash the exterior windows of your home and pressure-wash the decking and siding – do it. It’s only going to add to the wow factor in photos and showings.

Photo Day.

This day you need to go all out. Fresh flowers on the kitchen counter and bathroom, bed pillows fluffed, blankets and towels folded with precision. These photos are the advertisements for your home, bringing buyers in and they need to be spectacular. Make sure your lawn is mowed and flowerbeds are manicured.

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I know this sounds like a lot (and it truly is) but it’s worth it. You’ll end up with a faster sale, and most likely get more return on your sale. What you put in, you’ll get back out – and a faster sale means less disruption of your regular life (or your new life in yet another home!).

 

 

If you are looking for staging ideas, paint colours, home decor style ideas. I pin A LOT and you can follow me at https://www.pinterest.ca/andreaarient/

Confessions of a Serial Mover.

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ConfessionsImage

I have moved 11 times in 10 years.

To be fair not all to houses I have purchased and sold. Some were rentals to try a new neighbourhood. Some for work, a few for my son’s school needs and maybe a few flights of fancy. All this packing and unpacking, selling and buying have taught me a few things about real estate I’ll be writing about here. Perhaps some of my stories can save you a few headaches and maybe even a few dollars.

Now back to the 11 moves.

I did once Google “people who move all the time” and did come up with a few personal anecdotes from others that echoed some of my motivations. One particular blog talked about the newness of a new city, a new job, new home – that feeling of starting over. The plight of home renting and having little control over your landlords decisions regarding where you living came up quite a bit. Some said they just liked the work of renovation and styling different types of homes.

For me it’s always more been about the project. The task of finding a house that needs a bit of love (not too much love because thats a whole other blog post), something that allows me to impart my love of design, decor and furniture on a new space and leave it better off than I found it. Once that work is complete, my eye tends to wander back over to those MLS listings in search of that new project and challenge.

Yes, all that moving can get expensive and it’s sometimes exhausting.

I’ve worked hard with most (I’d say 80%) of my house sales to bring in profit that gets moved into the next acquisition allowing a bigger budget for purchase or renovation. It doesn’t always work that way but by enlarge if you work the market you can end up on the plus side of the equation. This constant rotation of packing boxes has become much less practical now that my kids are in grade school of course, but I would be lying to say I’m not already looking for the next house that needs some of my kind of style.