I am often asked when taking a listing, "What should I do to make my home more attractive to prospective buyers?"  There is more than one answer to the query and they can range from the very simple to the fairly complicated. On the simple side, there are a couple of basic tips that always apply:

Clutter- The clutter of daily life is the most common and one of the most serious problems in selling a house. I ask sellers to remember that we are not just selling a house; we are also selling a dream. Most buyers have houses full of clutter. That's one of the reasons they want to move. When the garage is full and the house and all of its closets are full, the answer is plain, "We need a bigger house!!". And so the search begins. The last thing that these prospects want to see is a house that's just as full of junk as their own. They dream of a spacious home with everything in its place and plenty of space. Soooo, sellers - make your house fit the buyer's dream. As a happy side benefit, the house will seem larger, the garage will actually have the cars in it and you will find that you haven't really even touched a lot of the stuff that's lying around in a couple of years

Smell - The sense of smell is the most powerful of the senses. It can remind us of events long forgotten in the conscious mind and take us back to a simpler, more pleasant period of our lives. If your house does that for a buyer, they just might buy it and not even know why. So be sure the house smells good or, as a minimum, doesn't smell bad. If you have a cat box in the kitchen, get rid of it. If you have a cat box in the bathroom, get rid of it. If you have to farm Fluffy out while the house is on the market, do it. Nobody can concentrate on fulfilling their dreams of a great new home, when all they can smell is stale cat pee. Ditto smelly dogs, ferrets, rats, snakes, hamsters, guinea pigs, birds, laundry, dirty dishes, bathrooms, bed clothes and on and on. It's cheap, it's easy -  make the house smell clean!  The happy side benefit is that the house will be clean.

There's more to this story. We'll have more tips next time.