Preparing Your Home to Sell: To Fix or Not to Fix

An EzineArticle by JK Clevenstine.

Once you’ve made the decision to sell your home, there are a ton of other decisions that immediately follow.

But probably one of the most unpleasant decisions is, what do I have to do to get this place ready to sell? Why unpleasant? Because it involves TIME and MONEY – two things most home sellers have little of.

There are three schools of thought on this topic. One is to do nothing, cross your fingers, and see what you get. In areas where the real estate market is hot, many home sellers opt for this solution, because they think buyers are so desperate that they’ll make an offer anyway. And while you may get an offer, you’ll definitely leave a lot of money on the table in the process.

The second school is to recognize that some items need to be replaced or repaired, and offer buyers a credit for those items as part of the deal. You’ve saved yourself the work, but not the money. This option can actually be worse than the first one, because you don’t know how much you would have gotten without offering the credit. Again, you’ll eventually get an offer, but you’re missing out on getting the best price for your house.

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