The real estate sales season is almost upon us, so now is the time to establish your game plan for selling your home. Capital Disposal's outside sales rep, Malio Lozano, has been renting dumpsters to downsizers, relocators, and other home sellers in the Austin, Texas, area for over 5 years. "While it is common knowledge that cluttered, dark, dirty houses don't sell well, what isn't common knowledge is how long it takes to sort through a household full of memories, keepsakes, and yes, junk, to get a house truly ready for sale," he explains.
Pictures of cluttered rooms filled wall-to-wall of personal belongings can turn away even the most motivated of buyers. "If a buyer is looking at all of your stuff, they can't picture their stuff in there instead. When a house feels like it belongs to someone else, it doesn't really feel like it's for sale yet, until you do the necessary decluttering," Malio added.
"I advise sellers to never book your moving day and your closing day on the same day, or even the same week. You should give yourself plenty of time, even a month or two, to make sure that what you're taking with you fits, that what you're giving away is picked up, and whatever is left can be sold or donated before filling up the landfill," Malio says.
Rushing through the clean-out process can add stress, lower the money raised from the sale of items not being moved, and even delay the sale of the home until it is organized and cleaned to the point of being visually appealing to prospective buyers and their agents.
The first thing you should do when you put a house on the market is to rent a dumpster so you can directly cull out the items you know are unwanted and aren't in good enough condition to sell or recycle. Handling unwanted items two and three times as they accumulate is inefficient and wastes time.
The longer you've lived in one home, the longer you will need to go through this process. But no matter how long you've been in a home, you will need to create a simple strategy for clearing out the clutter and personal items first and either packing them to move, giving them away, or disposing of them.
Consider what your next home will be like, and what items you want to take with you, if this is a relocation and not an estate sale. Carefully consider how much more or less space you will have in the next home. And definitely measure your new space so you can approximate how much room you will have for your existing furniture and belongings, if applicable. Downsizers especially can find themselves in a difficult position when they move everything to a new home and find they can barely sort through their belongings in their new, smaller space. It can be very stressful and unnecessarily expensive to handle everything just to throw a lot of it away at the new location. It's better to take your time where you have ample space to carefully sort and consider each item.
Most of all, don't procrastinate. According to Zillow, Austin home sales are expected to keep climbing. This means an increasing need for dumpsters in preparation for homes going on the market in the coming weeks. If you are planning to sell your home this season, now it the time to contact Capital Disposal at 512-229-1969 to book a dumpster in advance before they are gone.
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