2022 New Year’s resolutions for home sellers

2. Make your home stand out online. There may not be a crowd of homes for sale, but you want yours noticed for all the right reasons. Anyone looking in your neighborhood will see that your home is for sale. But they’re probably pretty seasoned buyers at this point, and they’ll quickly be able to tell if your home is a possibility.

So, do what you can to make your home look as clean and polished as possible: Strip your home of all personal effects and artwork, clear out half the furniture (or all, in some cases), repaint the walls white, buff the floors, and put up neutral bed coverings. Give your home a deep cleaning, re-grout dirty tiles, and replace carpet as needed. Replace old fixtures with modern LED lights. Open the window shades (or remove them) and clean the windows.

Charming exteriors will get noticed faster, and if prospective sellers do a drive-by showing, your home must dazzle them into stopping to take a closer look. To that end, repair anything that’s broken. Repaint where needed. Be sure to shovel the driveway and walkways so prospective buyers don’t have trouble coming up to the front door. Once spring comes, plant colorful flowers and edge your lawn. Decide if your front door and walkway could use sprucing up with a coat of paint or a more complete refresh.

3. Decide in advance what is the minimum acceptable sales price, and then stick to it. One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is letting greed get the best of them. Either they set the list price too high, and then have to go through painful rounds of list price reductions, or, once an offer comes in, they fight tooth and nail for every last dollar instead of negotiating to get the deal done.