Top 5 Tips for Selling Your Home in the Fall

Selling your home in the spring is ideal, but of course life doesn’t always work out the way we hope it will.  If you find yourself needing to sell quickly in the fall or early winter, don’t stress, there are a few things you can do to increase the likelihood that your home will sell quicker.  Here are our top tips for selling your home in the fall.

1. Clean up your yard! Spring and summer are great because our yards usually fill up with blooming flowers and lush greenery, but the closer we get to fall the more our yards change from a garden oasis into an overgrown and dying mess.  If you are selling your home in the fall, it is absolutely imperative for you get out the loppers, hedge trimmers, and rakes, and fill up as many compost bags as you can.  Even if some of your flowers still have blooms, cutting them back to show that your yard is fully prepped for the season will go a long way in selling your home faster. 

2. Decorate your front door!  You may not think hanging a wreath on your front door will do much of anything, but the truth is, it does.  Fall is one of the best seasons for home decorations, and touring a property that has good seasonal curb appeal will invoke a welcoming feeling to anyone who comes up to the house.  A word of warning though, do not go overboard and choose decorations that don’t overly scream fall or Halloween.  A tasteful wreath, a planter with lovely mums and a few gourds is really all you need.

3. Spice up the interior!  Since fall is the season where warm colors rule, you may want to consider adding a few new coats of paint to change the overall feel of cooler colored rooms.  Now, I am not saying go out and paint the master bedroom burnt orange, but adding a few accent walls with a warm caramel color might be nice and will definitely be more visually pleasing to a buyer’s eye.  Also, use a few other punches of warm colors to your bathrooms by switching out the shower curtains, towels, and adding a seasonal plant.  

4. Make your home available during the day!  Showing your house is always an inconvenience, albeit a necessary one if you are serious about selling.  Since it gets dark earlier in the fall, it is to your advantage to show your home while you have the most natural light available.  Again you might not think it is such a big deal, but in fact, it is.  Your eyes will not automatically see all the features of the home in the dark or under artificial lighting.  Furthermore, touring the exterior of a property and getting for a feel of a community are much harder at night, if not impossible for some properties.

5. Provide additional information!  Set up a welcome table for showings that includes things like spring and summer pictures of the home, neighborhood information, HOA inclusions, and testimonials from your neighbors.  Providing this kind of information will help potential buyers visualize what the community and property is like during its prime.