How to Prepare Your Condo for a Quick Sale

The real estate market can be volatile and there are never any guarantees that condos in Montreal will sell quickly. If you are not in a hurry, it won’t matter whether your property takes a week or a year to sell, as long as you achieve a fair asking price. But if you are eager to move, or you need to release equity from the sale of the property, it is in your best interests to do everything you can to ensure the property sells as quickly as possible.

De-clutter Your Home

One of the most important steps to take when selling a property is to remove all extraneous clutter from rooms. The more clutter you have, the smaller a room will look, which is hardly the object of the exercise. Prospective buyers want to be able to look at a room and picture it with their own furniture. The more crowded a room is, the more difficult this will be.

You don’t need to empty the house in order to sell it. Instead, remove everything you don’t need and place it in storage. Just leave the basics and some nice ornaments – cleaning will be a lot easier and the house will feel much larger as a result.

Redecorate

It is a good idea to redecorate when you are ready to sell your condo. Buy some neutral cream paint and give every room a fresh coat. Buyers are often put off by loud, bright and gaudy colours, even if you happen to think they look fabulous. The same applies to wallpaper. A feature wall or two will look good, but choose your paper wisely.

Complete the To-Do List

Do you have a long list of jobs to complete? Make sure you fix the leaky gutter, repair the dodgy window and fix the loose tiles in the downstairs shower room. Buyers will notice the little things and even if you are normally pretty good at keeping on top of jobs, they will automatically assume you don’t do much in the way of maintenance. And if the gutter leaks, what else is wrong?

Spruce Up the Garden

A lovely garden can really sell a home, so pay extra attention to the outdoor space when preparing a home to sell. If there is a garden at the front of the property, plant some pretty flowers or buy a few hanging baskets to add ‘kerb appeal’. Tidy away children’s garden toys and trim the boundary hedges. Every little helps!

Dress to Impress

Real estate agents often ‘dress’ a property to make it more attractive to buyers. This typically involves staging the rooms so that they look as if they belong on the pages of a magazine. You don’t necessarily need to go to that much trouble, but buying some fresh flowers and brewing coffee before a viewing are both effective strategies that could swing the pendulum in your favour.

Be willing to spend a bit of money bringing your condo up to scratch prior to a sale. It really will be money well spent.

by Kingman