Getting your home ready for the market is the single most important thing you can do. You should start preparations well before you intend to list it. Staging your home is perhaps one of the best ways you can set your home apart in a tight market, especially if you’ve had trouble selling it in the past. Studies show in the past that staging brought higher sales prices where homes sold in a fraction of the time as other homes on the market. It is true that the home that shows the best overall gets the offer. Staging can mean many things, be simple or complicated, but one thing that is essential in staging is a clean home.

All things equal except cleanliness? Cleaner home sells.

Clean, clean some more, and then yes, do it even more. And then keep cleaning it and keep it clean while for sale. This is the time to clean your home like it’s never before been cleaned. I show homes all the time. If you take two almost exactly equal homes (which happens a lot) of which one of my buyers are considering, I almost always hear one ultimate differentiator: one would need a good scrub, but the other one does not. Guess which one they buy? Right, the cleaner one…every time. It’s not just some buyers that notice how clean a home is or isn’t. Their senses are in overdrive when looking for a home with the endless options they have. Everyone notices it. And they will scrunch their nose up at the one that’s not clean. Often after they’ve seen another 5 or 6 homes or more, they won’t remember all of the great things your home has to offer…they’ll remember that it needed cleaning, and that only.

Walls

Clean high, clean low, and certainly in the middle. One dirty place they will absolutely notice and be unforgiving is the walls. Cleaning the walls is essential to getting your home ready to market. I don’t know why, but they look at the walls. Maybe its because you’ve taken down all of the personal things (hopefully), and it’s more exposed. Maybe they want to seem like a home condition expert by doing their own personal inspection whether they know a thing about houses or not. Maybe walls are all there is to look at because it’s empty. Or perhaps they are embarrassed about looking through your personal home and stare there more often. Something you can use to get stains off the wall is Krudd Klutter.

Floors

You should really consider getting your carpets professionally cleaned, but if you have just have to minimize costs to get ready, you can go to any local grocery or hardware store and rent a carpet cleaner for the day - RugDoctor is one I frequently see. It’s usually a minimal cost of $35 or so. You have to buy the products that go along with it, but make sure you treat it with the stain treatment and heavy-traffic area treatment first before cleaning it.

For bare floors, clean them thoroughly until they shine and appear spotless.

Windows

Even though you may never look out your own windows, buyers definitely do. They want to see what’s in view from every room outside. You want to make that view as pretty as it can be, even if it’s your neighbors roof that’s in need of repair.

The rest

Make sure there’s no grime anywhere. Scrub the inside of all your appliances and the top of your stove. Make sure the bathroom is especially grimeless in the shower, floor, tub area, around the toilet and of course near the sink. Make sure your ceiling fans are dusted and that every other surface is dusted…even the parts you never see. If you are short, count on someone over 6 ft wanting to buy your home. They’ll see those surface tops you never knew existed. Get on the chair or stool and clean up there.