If you wish to sell your home, you may already be planning to hire a real estate agent to help you determine the asking price and value of the property. Before you leap into showing your home, however, think about contacting some other, less obvious professionals who could play a critical role in the final success of your sale. Here are four such experts you should be talking to.
1. Home Inspectors
One of the first strangers to enter your home and look around is not a potential buyer but a home inspector. These professionals can comb every inch of a residence, from basement to attic, and identify any signs of damage, decay, sloppy construction, or potential hazards. Many home inspectors capture video in addition to taking detailed notes and photos.
Engaging a home inspector early in the sales process puts you ahead of the game in some important ways. When you receive the inspector's report, you and your real estate agent can decide whether to lower the asking price or go ahead and make the necessary repairs to maximize the home's value. Your serious prospects will almost certainly commission their own inspections if you don't already have a completed report from a reputable inspector.
2. Exterminators
Few things will put a home sale on hold more decisively than the discovery of pest infestation in the course of an open house showing. The time to call a pest control company is before you open the doors to the public, not after you've already turned potential purchasers away! Professional exterminators know how to inspect a home thoroughly for chewed wires, droppings, or any other signs of a pest problem. They can then eliminate that issue so you can show your home in confidence.
3. Insulation Providers
A home with minimal protection against the elements isn't likely to appeal to anyone searching for a comfortable, energy-efficient place to live. Fortunately, insulation is one of the easier things to improve in a home, thanks to the plethora of modern materials and products available. These include:
- Attic insulation - Many homeowners find that they can simply cover their existing insulation with layers of new materials. Insulation can be laid down in sheets or rolls, or it can be blown through a hose as a foam-like substance to fill corners and other tight spaces. Insulation professionals can choose materials that meet the recommended R rating (a measure of insulating ability) for your part of the country.
- Thermal windows - If you notice cold or hot air around your windows, chances are that you need to switch from single-pane to double-pane models. Double-pane windows not only place an additional glass barrier up against the cold, but they also contain inert gases between the two sheets of glass for even more thermal insulation.
- Garage doors - Many homeowners accept a cold garage in winter or a hot garage in summer as a fact of life, but your prospective buyer may not feel so charitable about it. Many modern garage doors are constructed of polyurethane sheets sandwiched between inner and outer steel layers to help equalize temperatures.
4. Home Staging Specialists
Home staging is a hugely important step toward nailing down that successful sale, and yet many people do not even know what it is. It's the art of depersonalizing the interior so that the home looks like it is brand-new and uninhabited. Prospective buyers want to read more and imagine their own personal touches gracing the residence, and they can't do that while your home still hosts your prize moose head trophy, authentic 1970 shag carpeting, or other "unique" features. A professional home staging specialist can:
- Advise you as to whether you need to update the basic interior design to modern tastes
- Recommend the right neutral colors of carpet and paint to provide a warm, airy, new-looking space
- Show you how to remove personal items temporarily during showing hours without packing them away permanently
Once you have these four experts working hard to optimize your home's value and attractive, you'll be a lot closer to obtaining that quick, easy, top-dollar sale. Good luck!
