Whats up everyone
I recently had clients hire me to sell an older home that hadn’t been updated.
The home is 50 years old and had original carpet, original bathrooms, original kitchen cabinets, tile floor, wallpaper in every room and not the fancy, trendy wallpaper you see now but the old 80’s vibe. Yellow flower wallpaper in the kitchen, the kids rooms each had their own decorated wall paper, you get the gist.
Cut to 2 months later and we ended up selling it for the 2nd highest price in the neighborhood with a limited budget.
So today I’m going to share with you the best updates to sell an older home without breaking the bank.
This is going to be a short video but packed with info so let’s dive right in
The budget was less than 18k to get it ready to sell. So today, I’m going to share with you the 10 step process it took to get it ready fast and without wasting a nickel.
1- Estate sale – hire someone reputable. I always vet anyone who I recommend and she was perfect for this house. The seller ended up making more money than he thought even with the estate sale agent taking 45% commission. She and her team organized the house and priced everything. In my seller’s words, they did a ton of work and it was worth every penny.
After the estate sale, it’s time to deal with everything else.
2- Donate/Discard- take post its and label the rest to either donate or discard. What goes to the dump and what can be donated. Find a local church or contact good will, the humane society or in our area we also have a wider circle and interfaith works. The goal is to get the house empty so we can see the walls and floors and how much work is needed.
If there are things you want to keep, then you may need a third “pile” or post its to say “store”
We want a blank pallet to work with.
3- Tackle wallpaper first. Do NOT paint over it, do it the right way and remove the wallpaper before you paint .
Paint whole house a neutral color. Include closets, ceilings and trim. I like agreeable grey by Sherwin Williams. It’s cost effective and looks great. Contrast it with a white semi gloss super paint for the trim and it’s a really nice clean look.
*now we are dealing with a blank slate so we can really see what stands out.
4- Floors- if you have old wood floors and they are drab and scratched, you can refinish them. But if they are still in pretty good condition and you don’t have the budget to finish them, try using Murphy oil or if you can get some pure tung oil which comes from the seeds of the tung tree, it really gets into the wood enhancing its grain and color and is environmentally friendly .
In the house I’m talking about, there were only hardwood floors in the living, family and dining rooms. They were ok so we decided not to refinish them and put that money towards other things.
We kept the tile floor in the foyer and kitchen. The only way to improve it within our budget would be to put new tile on top of it and it just didn’t seem worth it.
5- Kitchen – moving onto the kitchen. This kitchen had replaced the countertops with granite so we left then as they were. The cabinets were original wood cabinets with old dated hardware so we decided to paint the cabinets and replace the hardware. We chose white dove for the cabinets and these stainless steel pulls for the hardware.
6- Steam carpet
7- Replace boobie lights Barely any overhead lights -homes in the 70’s didn’t come with recessed lighting around here – or any lighting in the bedrooms.
8- Landscaping- mulch, tree trimming, bamboo, flowers
9- Deep Clean
10- Stage
Other tips- mirrors, faucets in bathroom and kitchen
Fortunately I had a great seller that appreciated our input and I’m so thrilled that they ended up doing so well on the house.