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You Need to Clean These Aspects of Your Home Before You Sell

Selling a home as recently as a year or two ago wasn’t all that difficult. The U.S. real estate market has been incredibly strong in recent years, and it’s helped homeowners sell their houses quickly.

But towards the end of 2018, the number of U.S. home sales took an unexpected tumble and fell to its lowest point in almost three years. It has made it tougher for some homeowners to sell their houses and get top dollar for them.

Want to reduce your chances of facing this scenario? Make sure your house is a clean house before you put it up on the market. When your home is clean from top to bottom, it’ll look a whole lot more attractive to potential buyers.

There are some aspects of your home that should take precedence over others as far as cleanliness is concerned. Check them out below.

Yard

One of the first things you should do when you cleaning up your property so that you can sell it is tidy up your yard. From the front yard to the area you have out back, you should remove sticks, leaves, and other debris to make your yard look its best.

You should also consider hiring some landscapers to come in and give your current landscape design an overhaul. You might be surprised by how much better your yard will look when you have a few new trees, fresh flowers, and a new bed of mulch.

Your yard is probably the first thing potential buyers will look at when they pull up in front of your home. So make sure that it looks warm and inviting so that people are intrigued enough to get out and take a look at the inside of your house.

Siding

Outside of checking out your lawn, another aspect of your home that people will look at before going inside of it is your siding. The condition of the siding on your home could ultimately make or break your house’s curb appeal.

If you have siding that’s on the newer side, you likely won’t have to worry about cleaning it too much. But if your siding has been on your home for 5 years, 10 years, or longer, it could have everything from dirt to grime caked on the side of it.

Fortunately, it’s simple enough to bring your home’s siding back to life and make it shine again. You can schedule soft touch house washing services that will get your siding clean without doing any damage to it.

You might also want to consider doing some surface cleaning on the outside of your home if you haven’t done it in a while. Clean your driveway, your sidewalks, your front porch, and more to enhance the appearance of them.

Windows

Have you neglected to clean both the inside and outside of your windows on a regular basis? They could very well be dragging down the curb appeal of your home without you even realizing it.

Cleaning your home’s windows will also do more than just make your windows look great. Here are several other benefits that come along with cleaning your home’s windows:

Makes your windows last longer
Allows more natural light to enter your home
Keeps your windows opening and closing properly

You really can’t afford not to hire a professional window washer to clean your windows thoroughly for you before selling your home.

Kitchen

In a perfect world, you should remodel your home’s kitchen and update it completely before you start trying to sell your home. You can turn your kitchen into a key selling feature by upgrading it.

But you should also make sure the kitchen is 100 percent clean before you have people come through your home to check it out. By wiping down your countertops, scrubbing the floors, and making sure the appliances sparkle, you can paint your kitchen in the most favorable light possible.

Bathrooms

Once you’re finished scrubbing down your kitchen, head over to your bathrooms and show them some love, too. From your toilets and sinks to your showers and floors, you should wipe down every square inch of a bathroom space before showing your home off.

Even if your home’s bathrooms are outdated, the fact that you took the time to clean them will reflect well on you and the rest of your home.

Basement

Is your basement area cluttered with cardboard boxes, old furniture, and other crap that makes it look smaller than it actually is?

Prior to selling your home, it’s a good idea to conduct a purge in your basement. Throw out anything that you don’t want anymore or donate it to a good cause. You can also try selling anything that might be worth something.

This will clear out your basement in no time and make it look more presentable to others. It’ll also save you from having to clear out your basement later once you’re able to sell your home.

Deck

A deck can be a very attractive selling feature to buyers. People will often picture themselves sitting out on the deck to relax and throwing parties on it.

But they’re not going to imagine themselves doing these things if your deck looks like it’s seen better days. Clean your deck and seal it before you start trying to sell your home so that it looks like a place people will want to hang out.

A Clean House Is More Likely to Sell

Technically, you don’t have to clean your home before selling it if you don’t want to. There are plenty of people who leave their homes as-is when selling them.

But you run the risk of scaring buyers off if you don’t have a clean house. They won’t love the way it looks, and they’ll wonder what else you didn’t do in your home outside of not cleaning it. It could cause your home to sit on the market for a long time before selling.