Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2010
 

Prepping your house for a sale

BY ELLEN JAMES MARTIN
Universal Uclick
 

MATAMOROS / MCT

The investment banker and his wife wanted to sell their suburban home and move to an apartment in Manhattan where they could retire. As empty nesters they saw no point in keeping a grand old house with lots of upkeep headaches.

However, their real estate agent told them that they'd have to reduce their belongings by at least 50 percent to achieve a successful sale. And they had just a month to complete the enormous task.

``People buy on emotion. If they're going to pay what your house is worth they need to see clearly its good architecture, and clutter is a distraction from that,'' says Cynthia Braun, the professional organizer hired by the couple to help sort through their belongings.

Braun taught the couple shortcuts that allowed them to maximize the use of their scarce hours by creating a game plan for their major project -- and helped pave the way for a fruitful transaction soon after. If they can afford it, she urges others to also seek professional guidance for their presale decluttering campaign.

``The best approach is to find a good person to act as your counselor and coach and then go room-by-room,'' says Braun, who's affiliated with the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.napo.org).
 

Here are some strategies for homeowners who must act swiftly to get their property clutter free and ready for sale:

• Quickly envision your home as strangers would like to see it.

Nowadays, nearly everyone planning to buy a home wants a place that feels open and airy -- where they can get a fresh start on life, Braun says. You convey that to prospective purchasers with a property that's lean of furnishings and free of any hints of disorder.

Braun says you can get an idea of what buyers want by looking at online catalogs for such home furnishing stores as Restoration Hardware (www.restorationhardware.com) or Pottery Barn (www.potterybarn.com).

• Follow the ``last year rule'' religiously.

With the exception of highly prized family items, such as photos or heirloom jewelry, very little should be retained by your household that has not been used within the last 12 months, says Michelle Minch, the owner of Moving Mountains Design (www.movingmountainsdesign.com), which helps home sellers declutter and then stage their properties for sale.

The ``last year rule'' is especially helpful, Minch says, when culling through closets crammed with clothing and shoes.

``Your closets and cabinets should be no more than 50 percent full or people looking at your house with think it lacks enough storage space,'' says Minch, who is affiliated with the Real Estate Staging Association (www.realestatestagingassociation.com).

• Consolidate your memorabilia.

No one in the home-staging or organizing fields should suggest you dispense with items that hold particular meaning to you. Rather, they should recommend you pare down your memorabilia collections.
One quick way to set limits on volume of sentimental items is to create and fill a single ``memory box'' for each person in the household.

It's usually unreasonable, for instance, to save 20 baby outfits for your now 17-year-old daughter. But one little dress could fit nicely into a memory box, along with the girl's baby book, and a few trophies she's earned for soccer.
Another way to keep memorabilia compactly is to take photos of precious items, such as the grand piano crowding your living room, and then give these away or sell them.

• Use small pieces of weekday time to build momentum.

As Minch notes, few wannabe home sellers can block out large chunks of time for decluttering during weekday hours, as they often can on weekends. But many people can allocate about an hour after work each day to clean out a drawer, for instance.

The same principle can be applied to closet cleaning.

``Go into a closet and pull out one-foot-worth of clothing each day. Throw out the extra wire hangers from the dry cleaner, then sort the clothes into piles -- one pile for giveaway, one for throw away, one for cleaning or mending and one for pieces you really wear,'' Minch says.

• Discover the instant gratification of online giveaway programs.

You can always give your extra items to charity, such as Goodwill. A still faster way to unload is with an online posting.

For instance, Minch likes to see her clients turn to the Freecycle Network (www.freecycle.org), a nonprofit movement of people giving (and receiving) free items from other residents in their local area.

``It's much easier for people to let go of their things if they know they'll be put to good use and not wind up in some landfill,'' Minch says.

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