Get Your House Ready for Showing with This Step-by-Step Checklist

If you’re planning to sell your home, you need to make sure that it’s ready for people to see it. A house showing is your first – and often only – chance to make a positive impression on a potential buyer. You want to present your home in the best possible light, both to maximize the potential offers you may receive and to increase your chance of receiving offers in the first place.  

Preparing your house for a showing can feel stressful and overwhelming – especially if you’re still living there while you’re trying to sell it. In this guide, we’ll simplify the process by giving you a step-by-step checklist. Are you about to begin showing your house to potential buyers? Here’s how to make sure that people will love it.

Remove Clutter

Removing the clutter is the most important aspect of getting ready to show your home. That’s not easy to do if you’re still living here, but the reason why it’s so important is because people don’t want to see your life when they’re viewing the home – they want to picture what their lives in the home might be like.

You can’t just remove all of the items from your shelves and stuff them into closets. It’s crucial to give potential buyers the impression that your home offers ample storage for their things. You need to identify the items that aren’t necessary and find a way to get them out – either temporarily or permanently.

• Identify the things that you can sell or give away. Some of the ideal avenues for selling unwanted items include Craigslist for large items and eBay for smaller things. You can also give things to friends and family members who can use them or donate items to goodwill for a potential tax deduction.
• If your house still looks cluttered even though you’ve already sold or given away everything you can, consider renting a space at a storage facility and using it to store the things that you don’t need to use immediately.

Clean Your Home Thoroughly

After you’ve removed everything from the home that you can do without for now, it’ll hopefully look roomier and airier than ever. The next step is to beautify all of the extra space you’ve created by giving the home a top-to-bottom cleaning. Here’s a quick checklist of the most important things that you need to handle.

• Clean the ceilings and walls with warm water and mild detergent.
• Dust and polish hard surfaces like tables, shelves, counters and cabinets.
• Clean the appliances.
• Vacuum upholstered furniture and apply a conditioning compound to leather furniture.
• Vacuum and mop the floors. Make sure that you also clean the hard-to-reach areas behind furniture. Consider renting a steam cleaner if you haven’t cleaned the carpets in a while.

Take Care of Bad Smells

It probably goes without saying that your home needs to smell good if you want to make a good impression on a potential buyer. Giving the house a thorough cleaning will go a long way toward making sure that there aren’t any unpleasant smells that could potentially turn people off, but there may be a few additional things that you’ll need to take care of.

• Don’t ever smoke in your home. Research suggests that potential buyers will reduce their offers by as much as 30 percent on a house that smells like smoke. Go to a vape shop and grab a Lost Vape and some vape juice instead.
• Make sure that out-of-the-way areas such as the basement, the attic and spaces behind furniture are as clean as they can be.
• Clean your drains thoroughly to remove the odors of old food and cooking grease.
• Check the cabinets and the areas under your sinks for musty odors that could potentially signify a plumbing issue. If you find a leaking pipe, get it fixed right away. You can also put activated charcoal in tight spaces to help absorb unwanted odors.
• Clean your heating and/or air conditioning systems and replace any air filters.

Clean the Home’s Exterior

Cleaning the living space isn’t the only important aspect of preparing your home for a showing. You also need to make sure that the exterior is clean because people will view your home from the street before they ever go inside. Curb appeal could even be a major factor that influences whether people decide to schedule a walkthrough in the first place.

• Clean your home’s siding and roof with detergent and a hose or pressure washer.
• Clean the driveway and any walkways.
• Make sure that the garage and areas like porches and decks are clean and uncluttered.
• Mow the lawn and trim hedges and other plants.

Stage Your Home for the Showing

As the date of the showing approaches, consider adding some finishing touches to set yourself up for success. Staging your house for the showing helps to showcase its strengths and makes it easier for potential buyers to visualize themselves living in the space.

• Think about the arrangement of your furniture and consider moving things around to optimize for traffic flow. Moving items away from the walls can help to create spaces for conversation and cultivate an atmosphere of space and airiness.
• Think about removing personal items such as family pictures and replacing them with more neutral artwork. People don’t want to look at reminders of your life in the home; they want to picture themselves there.
• Consider adding a few props to promote a lifestyle that potential buyers might like to enjoy. Potential ideas might include placing a platter of fresh cookies in the kitchen, putting a breakfast tray on the bed and turning an unused bedroom into a spacious home office.
• Add some finishing touches to make the home look, smell and feel comfortable and inviting. If you’re showing the home to several potential buyers on the same day, it’s worth the expense to buy some fresh flowers. Open the windows and curtains to flood the space with fresh air and natural light.