Selling House - Harrisburg,PA

In this market hire a good real estate agent.

remove one piece of furniture from each room, put it in storage

remove all personal pictures from the walls

Remove all clutter

Paint it a neutral, beige or sand, not white

professionally clean inside and out, have it power washed

Replace worn carpet, and wood floors or have them redone.

HAve an open house with real estate agents first, then one for buyers.

Offer a real estate agent bonus, aka BRIBE. I hated doing this but it did sell our house. We offered $2000, we started at $1000. This is money the real estate agent gets for bringing the buyer to the house. At closing they get an amount on top of their commission, yours does not get this.

Offer to pay some of the closing costs

Pay attention to the kitchen, get those dingy drip pans replaced

Take down blinds, or curtains that will not stay, if the blinds are outdated replae them. Wash curtains.

Paint the mailbox post

Retar the driveway

Have a clean sweep every morning, do the baseboards.

Farm out the animals for a while, can mom take them?

I hail from Minnesota where if your house isn't staged professionally, expect to sit on it for a long time. I forked out the money to stage my house and it sold in 8 days!!!! Some tricks I learned from my stager were this:

1: Take all family photos down, put up eye pleasing graphics type art.
2: NEVER leave any garbage can out in view. Stash them in the garage for showings if you have to. Or put bathroom ones under the sink inside a cabinet. This rule goes for dirty clothes hampers, get rid of them for showings.
3: For showings, turn on EVERY single light in the house, even in walk in closets and the front porch (even if it's sunny out).
4: Take anything down that resembles a family schedule. No calendars, no white boards, no magnets left on fridges etc...
5: Don't leave up any child proofing. For showings, take down all baby gates!
6: Spray closets that are full of clothes with febreeze right before a showing.
7: Open all blinds fully to let in all the natural light as possible.
8: Ditch the dirty "welcome" mat on the front doorstep and replace with a fresh, bright colored one for showings.
9: In the bathroom, remove all toothbrushes from the counter top, along with bar soaps in showers and generic hand pumps. Replace with decorative hand soap pumps and "hide" anything you'd use to clean your body. Also, do NOT put rugs that hug the toilet or toilet seat rugs on, ditch those and for showings, always make sure the toilet seats are down.

She basically told me, the more the house looks like a "model home" where furniture is placed and pictures hung, no one wants to see how you live in it so get rid of any personalization. Oh, last thing, she also told me that vinyl lettering that is so popular on walls, needs to come down also.

It was crazy going through all the steps before each showing, but I did it, and it paid off! A friend emailed me a year later and told me her house wasn't going anywhere and she was pulling it off the market- she didn't stage hers:(

GL!!!!

I have friends that recently moved from Harrisburg to Philly. They are trying to sell their house too. No such luck yet.

One of the keys to selling your home in this market is pricing it to sell. Price does matter. You may also consider seeing if you qualify to refinance your current mortgage to a lower interest rate. This may put you into a position where you would be able to afford the heating cost of the home a little better. Have you had you home assessed for fuel efficiency? There may be simple things you can do right now that won't cost much to help your heating and cooling costs go way down.

St. Francis buried upside down in the backyard...

Not sure if it works, but he's in our flowerbed as I type in the hopes that we can sell at some point.

Good luck!

We sold our house about a year ago, in 7 weeks following what Sunny D did. Our real estate agent guided us through the process. She walked thru our townhouse and told us what to get rid of, paint, put away, etc. She brought in new art work and decorative stuff to stage the home. Price is important too, check the comps, you will not get more than that. Homes can be sold in this market, it takes work and a great agent. Ask around and find someone you are comfortable with. We turned on all the lights too, once I left for a showing and the power went out, I was in a panic. Looking back, it was funny, but at the time it was just stressful. Think of it as creating the home the buyers want, as soon as it is for sale, the home is no longer yours. Best of luck!!

i agree with EVERYTHING Sunny D said. we did all of that and i researched fung shui for selling a house AND i made a "vision board" of selling our house and buying our new one - i put a pic of our the new house we found on our fridge with the price we offered for us to look at everyday (took it down for showings). our house sold in 2 weeks and we got our new house for the price we wanted! good luck!