5 Ways You Can Get Ready For The Busy Fall Market Right Now

Every year like clockwork, the real estate industry collectively begins to gear up for fall and what always promises to be an active and exciting market. No matter where you’re based, it seems that the fall real estate market is always a busy time of year for buyers and sellers alike.

That being said, however, buyers and sellers don’t really need to prepare for the fall market in the same way. While buyers will be sorting out their finances and getting mortgage pre-approvals, sellers are required to do quite a bit more to get their homes up to market-ready condition.

So, if you’re planning on selling your home this fall, the best piece of advice we can give you is to start preparing now. To save you a lot of stress and headaches down the line, here are five ways you can get your home ready for this fall’s busy market right now.

1. Address Any Problem Areas

If you’re looking to truly maximize the market value of your property and sell it for its highest possible price, the very first thing any seller should do is address any damaged or dysfunctional areas of your home.

Whether you hire a professional home inspector or take on the job yourself, it’s essential you identify any parts of your home that are in need of some maintenance before listing it on the market. Why? Well, if left damaged or unrepaired, these are the first things buyers will use to try and negotiate a lower price for your home.

If your home is clearly in need of some work, buyers will want to take the cost of repairing it out of their initial offer. Things like water damage, rotting wood, defective home systems, and even leaky taps are among the most obvious to spot, so if you’ve got any number of these issues it’s simply not worth listing your home for sale without fixing them first.

Want to know what homes just like yours have recently sold for? Do some market research and check out Our Sold Listings Portfolio here.

2. Declutter, Declutter, Declutter

One of the easiest things you can do to bring your home up to visitor-ready condition is to do some merciless decluttering. Getting all of your extra stuff out of the way before showcasing your home to visitors is essential when selling, and the good thing is it’s something you can start doing bit-by-bit far in advance.

The reasons for decluttering your home should be pretty straightforward — no buyer wants to have to try to look past all of your extra stuff in order to get a good idea of what your home looks like when seeing it in person or in photos. Plus, by getting rid of all your unnecessary personal items, your home will appear more spacious and easier to navigate for potential buyers during home showings.

Not sure where to start? Some of the biggest culprits for collecting clutter are places like closets, countertops, basements, and spare rooms. Also, prioritize keeping high-traffic areas like hallways, doorways, and staircases clear of any clutter or obstacles. The idea here is to make your home feel nice and easy to walk around in for your potential buyers during tours.

Looking for some more things you can do ahead of time to help prepare for your home sale? Read about our Top 3 To-Do’s Before You Sell Your Home here.

3. Get Cleaning

Now that you’ve got all of your extra stuff out of the way, you’ll probably notice you’ve been housing quite a few more dust bunnies than you previously knew about, and now’s the time to find them a new place to live.

Before any buyers even see so much as a picture of your home, it should look as immaculately clean as possible from top to bottom. Yes, this includes windows, walls, cupboards, and cabinets too. For a proper deep clean, we always recommend our sellers get help from a team of professional cleaners, though if you think you can do most of the job yourself, that’s always welcome too.

Are you the proud owner of a few furry friends? While pets are definitely adorable housemates, they do tend to complicate things a little when selling your home. To help you out with that, here are our 5 Tips On Selling Your Home With Pets.

4. Lay On A Fresh Coat

Next up on the sellers’ to-do list is to revisit your home’s paint situation — both inside and out. If you’ve ever had your home painted before, you’ll know first-hand just how big of a difference it makes, which is why we recommend you lay on a fresh coat in some key areas before your potential buyers arrive.

While we wouldn’t expect you to re-paint the entire exterior of your home, touching up a few highly visible accents can make a huge difference. Places like your front door, window frames, and mailbox always benefit from a fresh new pop of colour, while any chipping or patchy paint jobs elsewhere should be retouched too.

Heading inside, the walls and ceiling in rooms like your living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedrooms should all be refreshed as well. In terms of colour, these should all ideally be painted in a warm, neutral colour like white, off-white, or light grey.

Not only will painting your rooms in a light neutral colour appeal to the widest audience of visiting buyers, but basic colour theory tells us that lighter coloured rooms also feel larger and more spacious than darker coloured ones. So when it comes to choosing a paint colour, keep it simple and stay away from anything too bold.

Unmentioned on this list of preparatory tasks: staging. Learn more about the power of staging when selling your home by reading about A Few Staging Tips For Sellers here.

5. Book Temporary Accommodation

The last thing you can do to prepare for a smooth and successful home sale is to make some travel plans. During the home showing process, it’s always ideal if you, the homeowner, are out of your home when tours are taking place — and this fall, the reasons for doing so are two-fold.

Firstly, home showings always function better for buyers when the owners of the home they’re visiting aren’t there. The atmosphere of their tour is less awkward or stressful without the presence of the current owners there, plus it heavily detracts from buyers’ ability to picture themselves living in your home. Instead, all they really think about is what your home will be like without you in it.

Secondly, in order to host in-person home showings this fall, Realtors® are going to need to follow strict health and safety guidelines to mitigate the risk of spreading COVID-19. Even though you might be fully vaccinated and testing negative for the virus, it’s still much riskier to have more people present during the showings than necessary.

Therefore, one of the best things you can do to ensure the showings process goes as smoothly as possible is to ensure you’re out of your home when potential buyers come to see it. Confirm with your Realtor® when the majority of your home showing appointments will be and make accommodations to be elsewhere when that is. Whether you book a weekend away somewhere special, rent an Airbnb close by, or stay with family or friends, the important thing is you’re out of the way.

At Karen Paul & Associates, our main objective when helping clients sell their homes is to make the entire process as easy as possible for them. See what we do to help by reading our guide to Selling A Home In Ontario.