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When selling your home, it can often be a stressful experience cleaning up and getting your house ready for showings. Adding children into the equation can turn this into an overwhelming situation for you. You need a place for your kids to play around and have fun, but you also want to keep your house in tip-top showing shape at the same time. We have developed five helpful tips that you can follow in order to please both your children and buyers.
1. Stay Calm:
Don’t lose sleep! Luckily for the seller, inventory levels are lower this year than last, so buyers will be more apt to overlook small things. It is more of a buyers market that it has been in a while, but homes are still going under agreement quickly. Also, if it’s obvious that you have kids, a buyer will understand if you have a toy here or there that wasn’t put away. It’s also likely that your family home is best suited for another family, so if a mom and dad at the open house or showing see that you’re using a space wisely for toy storage, they may want the home even more.
2. If You Don’t Need It, Store It:
When a buyer looks through your home, you actually want them to envision it as their own. If there are any big items that you know your children like but are in the way, store them for a while. The same should be said with pictures. A few around the house is no problem at all, but a wall filled with family pictures can be a little bit distracting. There’s more on this in our recent staging rules blog, to read click here.
3. De-Clutter & Consolidate: It can be surprising to homeowners how much stuff accumulates throughout the house when they have kids. If you have the proper time to plan, use it to go through everything in the house to determine what you need and what you don’t need. If you are unsure about a certain item, think about the last time you used it. If you haven’t used it in over a month, it may be time to give it away. For additional tips on staging your home click here to read: How to Stage a House for Selling.
4. Always Prepare Before A Home Showing:
If you have kids, we suggest that you request at least four hours of notice before a showing. Be sure that you communicate with your agent about what times work and what times don’t work for you. Be flexible as well because your schedule may not fit exactly with a potential buyers schedule. Usual nap times, meal times, bath times or bedtimes can be blocked off if you let your agent know.
To always stay prepared, create a checklist of cleaning that you need to complete before a buyer walks into your home. Some things on your checklist could include cleaning up toys or rearranging a playroom in a specific way. To learn more, read our fall prep blog by clicking here.
5. Create a “Go-Kit” For Your Children:
Depending on the time of the day, you should have various snacks and activities ready for your kids. This will make leaving for showings fun for your kids and it will make a huge difference to help accommodate visitors.
When you do have to leave, talk to them about the exact reasons why they are doing so and that way they fully understand the process. If they understand the importance of what they are doing, it can be the difference between them getting out of the house in time and them not.
Keep in Mind:
For your kids, this may be the only place they have called “home” and selling their house can be a stressful experience for them. Depending on how old they are, you can discuss it with them so they feel like they’re a part of the process and can get excited about a new “big kid” room or new fun play room, or that fenced in yard for them to run around in with their dog. As most parent know, it’s all about how you spin it and how you prepare for things ahead of time. To learn more about the buying and selling process and for more tips on how to make this a smooth one with kids, contact one of our expert agents today.
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