Even in a seller’s market, you still want to do everything you can to get top dollar for your home. But when it comes to selling a house that’s empty, you might need to pull out a few more stops to make sure that you get top dollar.

Stage It.

Even if you can’t do anything else from this list, you will want to stage your home. Not only do the statistics support that staging a vacant home can increase your profit by around 6%, but it will also prevent buyers from thinking that you may be desperate to sell or that they can take advantage of a difficult situation and avoid paying top dollar. Why exactly does staging make such a difference? Its primary purpose is to make sure that the house feels like a home, especially when there is something unique or very open concept about your layout. However, it also has the secondary purpose of stopping people from asking questions like, “What’s wrong with this house that made them leave?” and “Why are these rooms so small?” In a competitive market where most buyers already feel like they're overpaying, you don't want to give your house any sort of stigma that will make them lower the number in their heads that they're willing to pay.

Stop by as Often as Possible

The age-old saying goes “whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” While there’s no reason to be quite so pessimistic, you do want to make sure that you stop by at least once a week to make sure that no pipes have decided to explode or any other unexpected incidents have occurred while no one is staying in the house ready to react quickly. After all, most problems can be dealt with quickly, but when they aren’t, much more damage can be caused. There’s no reason to leave money on the table when you can take preventative measures to make sure nothing strange happens to the property while it is on the market.

Ask Agents to Leave Lights On

If you’ve ever bought a house before, you know that most agents spend the last 3-5 minutes turning off all of the lights to save the sellers from paying extra money. However, our recommendation is that you actually request that agents leave your lights on. Not only will it detract criminals from robbing your home, but it will also cause the home to show better and feel more lived in for other showings that come by. 

Keep All Utilities On

Unless you are in a very tightly-budgeted situation, you will want to make sure to leave all of your utilities on and functioning properly. After all, you don’t want to be the listing with no functioning toilet (trust us, the potential buyers won’t try the toilets before leaving something behind that you want to be flushable) or the one where buyers are afraid to go in the basement because there are no lights. Additionally, don’t try to skimp out on savings by turning off things like the AC. Is saving those few dollars really worth the house feeling stuffy and smelly to every potential buyer who walks through because you set the AC to 80 to save money? We vote no! 

Forward Your Mail or Get Help from a Neighbor

First impressions are everything, so the last thing you want is mail spilling out of your mailbox or a bunch of packages laying on your front stoop. Not only does it make the house feel abandoned, but it just sort of sullies the “wow” feeling you want buyers to have when they walk up to your house. A little bit of mail in the mailbox never hurt anyone, but definitely make sure it doesn’t get out of hand! It’s all about the small details in real estate! Buyers are finicky, and you never know what could turn your top buyer away!

Do you have more questions about how to make sure that your empty listing is going to show its best? Let us help! All you have to do is reach out to 678-242-9981 or send us a message using the messenger icon on our website. We can’t wait to help set you up for success!