[DoubleF]

A few weird things I ran into that really stuck out in leaving a positive impression of the home:

- Sweep and vacuum the garage floor. It's like walking into a restaurant bathroom to get a sneak peek into what things are like behind the scenes. The place I bought was so damn clean, it was cleaner than my kitchen floor at home.

- Warm ish garage. It doesn't have to be toasty, but it's a pleasant surprise to open a garage door to not only a super clean garage, but a little bit balmy is a pleasant surprise (vs being a huge temperature difference). You can easily do this with a small wall mounted heater like 10-15 mins before a showing and then just take the heater with you when you move.

- Light bulbs and fixtures and switches, I have to repeat this. I discovered my townhouse had a totally different feel with different colored lights. It was really interesting to see how different colors lights and updated switches totally changed the aura of the home in good and bad ways.

- Covers. Fabric covers and stuff for chairs, sofas, small rugs, hallway runners, table runners etc. can be acquired cheaply for a few hundred bucks and again can really change the aura of the home. They can also help to improve the impression on the home and help you stand firm on a price, thereby saving extra money to what you spent.

- Buying $50 in matching rubber maid bins you can neatly stack to the side and use to recklessly throw things into to cover up messes also helps to improve impressions of a neat and tidy and well maintained home.


Things I learned from my dad and really good realtors:

- Consider that a certain things in your home is more about time than money and feeling good about things. A potential buyer is much more likely to be excited about a place that is straight up ready to move in irregardless of price rather than a place that needs around 5-10 hours and like $1K worth of work which is negligible overall. Something like that might cause them to prefer to attack the price for several times that amount because of the hassle of doing it along with all the other things they have to do. No need to do major work, but if there's minor fixes that you can do (minor touch up, squeaky hinges, base board or loose stone that could use a nail/glue etc.), make sure you deal with those things so a potential buyer can't use it as leverage to drop the price for many times the cost of fixing it yourself or even hiring someone to fix it. Honestly speaking, some buyers are fine with the price but if they see things like this, they'll use it to get an even better deal.

- Connected to the time concept above, definitely consider including extra chattel. Certain chattel you think a new owner might actually want, you're willing to potentially lose, isn't included in the opening price but can be negotiated into the price (ie: BBQ, extra fridge, deep freeze, large cabinets, patio sets, fire pits, hot tubs, tables, wall mounted home theatre stuff etc.). Rather than throw them in right away make it optional (Might be a headache rather than a bonus for some buyers). These items are probably not worth a ton and will probably cost you a bit extra to hire a mover to move further reducing the value of them to you. Plus they might not match your new place. Someone might have existing stuff but might not be opposed to getting something extra for the extra space they are getting (ie: Condo to detached house) rather than leave it empty for however long it will take them to acquire new stuff. When I bought a home that was staged by the builder selling several units, I asked what was going to happen to the staged furniture. He was going to move it to the next units till he sold the last unit, store it till he could sell it. He paid like $12K (not including the time and fees of the stager) and expected to get around $8K for it. I got all of the $12K of essentially brand new furniture that was color and theme matched to the home in lieu of arguing the price down an additional $5K because he wouldn't have to pay to store, move and spend time selling it. Recently when I bought a place, it seemed like the owner was moving out of province, so we asked for things like spare fridges, BBQ, deep freeze that you probably don't drag across provinces and we wouldn't mind and asked if it would shake free. That saved the owner the hassle to move and me the hassle to acquire. Basically random stuff that was probably going to be like $500-800 or more to buy used on Kijiji or something for free to seal the deal for both sides. If they said no, that's fine. But they said yes, so it was a win/win. As a seller though, I'd keep this as a final card to slow the negotiation on the last couple thousand or so. If you can save even $1K on negotiations by leaving it, that's $1K towards replacement stuff and extra on paying less to move the item.