Preparing to sell your home?

If you’re planning on renovating, consider the return rate for that particular renovation. A knowledgeable agent will be able to make recommendations with regard to which renovations will be worth your time and money.

According to a 2004 Canadian survey, the top three renovations that get you the most money in return are:

1. Bathrooms (75 to 100% return)
2. Kitchens (75 to 100% return)
3. Interior and exterior painting (50 to 100% return)

Other renovations and their average rate of return (the value they add compared to what they cost) include:

• Replacing roof shingles (50 to 80%)
• Replacing the furnace and heating system (50 to 80%)
• Renovating the basement (50 to 75%)
• Adding a recreation room (50 to 75%)
• Installing a fire place (50 to 75%)
• Up-grading floors (50 to 75%)
• Building a garage (50 to 75%)
• Replacing windows and doors (50 to 75%)
• Building a deck (50 to 75%)
• Installing central air conditioning (25 to 75%)

A simple way to give your home a fresh, clean look is to de-clutter and depersonalize your home. Perhaps your rooms are just looking tired and you want to know how to perk things up.  Though you love your collectibles and they are what make the house truly yours, when you are going to sell your home, the goal is not to have your stamp on it. The home is going to be theirs, not yours anymore. The same principle that led you to clean and repair your home before putting it on the market, holds true here – buyers have a hard time seeing past your personal possessions and picturing themselves at home. Far from rendering your home a featureless blank slate, tidying up the daily clutter you have gotten so used to actually shows off your home’s dimensions and fixtures, making everything more spacious and showing buyers how their possessions will look there.

If you have accumulated a lot of stuff, be prepared to rent a storage locker or POD, or hold a huge yard sale, or give generously to charity. Try making three piles: keep, maybe, and toss. Here are some of the areas you will want to tidy up:

• Kitchen counters and cupboards
• Bathroom counters, shelves and cupboards
• Closets
• Surfaces like coffee tables, desks, window ledges, any open shelving

If you have vacant or empty rooms, you may want to consider staging the room. This trick allows your to show on the functionality of the room.

The best times to consider staging and decorating are:

• When the home is extremely dated, to the point that existing furniture is in terrible shape and detracts from the home.
• When an investment property has been tenanted and the common areas are poorly maintained (if the tenants consent to having their space changed temporarily of course)
• When the house, or certain rooms, is vacant. Just as clutter can overwhelm potential buyers, so can total emptiness – it’s hard to get a good idea of room sizes without furniture to show what will fit inside. This is especially true of smaller condo units where furniture can provide a frame of reference, showing what you can do with the space.