Getting the Best ROI When You Sell Your Home

When selling, focus on these areas to maximize your outcome.

When I sit down with sellers, one of the main things we discuss is what we should do to the house to maximize the return on the sale. Which projects are best can vary widely by the house, but generally, there are two key factors you should focus on to achieve that result:

1. Clean it up. Cleaning your home is free, beyond the sweat equity you put into the cleaning. Decluttering your house can make it feel and appear larger. That means getting rid of a lot of unneeded knickknacks and other things that take up space. Pack those things up and store them away in the garage or a storage unit. To budget for a professional deep clean for a 1,700 square-foot, 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house, plan to spend between $6,500 and $7,500.

“You can’t just rely on a house having potential—you have to show that potential."

2. Paint, stage, and change out light fixtures. By doing all three of these tasks, you can completely change the feel of a house. Painting the interior of a 1,700 square-foot house should cost somewhere between $2,500 and $3,300. That depends on whether you include baseboards and ceilings and if wallpaper needs to be torn down. Staging can cost anywhere between $1,800 and $2,800, depending on how many rooms you want to stage. Changing out light fixtures can cost around $150 per fixture; typically, I change out between five and seven per house.

Check out the video above at 3:37 to see some before and after photos of a home we recently worked to sell. Had we not utilized our budget of $7,000 to prepare the home, we would have listed it at $599,000, but because we did, we listed it at $640,000. The house ultimately sold for $700,000!

You can’t just rely on a house having potential—you have to really show that potential, and taking care of these projects can make all the difference in your sale.

If you have any questions or need assistance in getting your home ready to sell, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d love to help you.