Hi everybody, John Herman, PropertyUp. This is the home of the 59 day, Guaranteed Sold program. and today I’m making a video about 10 things that make it impossible to sell your home.

These are basically “the don’ts”…

1. Odor – If you know your house has an odor, you need to get rid of the odor, because you need to look at it as though you are the buyer. Imagine you are the buyer walking into your home for the first time and look at it from the buyer’s perspective. So if you walk into your home and the odor hits you like “BAM!!”, you know it is time to get rid of the odor. So odors can distract people, and there’s a saying in real estate, “if it smells, it doesn’t sell.”

2. Dirty Bathrooms – You want to make sure you are sanitary in your bathrooms before the showings because buyers may have to use the restroom, and once they are in there things may effect them, and maybe they don’t bring it up to their agent right away, but later it comes up that it was one thing that pushed them away from the house, so you want to make sure you have a clean bathroom.

3. Fido and Felix – Pets. I am a pet owner and a pet lover, but not everybody is. So you just want to make sure your home is prepped for everybody. So, if you do have a cat or a dog, you want to make sure that all the cat hair or dog hair has been cleaned up, put their bowls away, take them for a walk, and make sure we don’t have any pet odors.

4. Pests – Look for spiders, termites, bees, ants, anything that’s out there in the open that you should get rid of before somebody walks through your house. Pests are a big deal. A lot of people don’t like seeing those things and you want to make sure that cleaned up and taken care of before you actually list.

5. Musty and Dampness – This will happen a lot in the basement if you don’t have a lot of air flow and it’s dark, damp and dusty, it’s not going to be a good selling point, so think about investing in a dehumidifier, which will solve most of the problems, or open the windows and get some fresh air in there.

6. Clutter – So if you have cluttered walkways in your rooms that the buyer would have to walk through to get to see the house, you might want to declutter. This will open up the room, and make the rooms seem bigger. So declutter your home before the showings.

7. Darkness – When buyers walk into a dark house they just feel like something is “off”, there’s not enough sunlight, or whatever it is. You want to make sure that wattage is maxed out in all of your light sockets, because light and bright is what sells homes.

8. Everpresent seller – If you are selling your home, I highly suggest that you go for a walk with the dog or just take off for a ride in the car because it’s a very personal experience and if the buyer comes in and says some things that you may not agree with as a seller it can get awkward. You want to make sure that doesn’t happen. You want to sell your house so give the buyer’s a chance to look without the seller present.

9. A bad first impression – You want to make sure that buyer has a great first impression as they’re walking into your home. You want to make sure that the outside doesn’t have any weeds, there’s no chipping paint, no behives making them feel vulnerable…you just want to make sure that the first impression, as they first walk in is a good one.

10. Closet Space – If you don’t have a lot of closet space and you have everything stacked up to the hilt and when you push things in you’re jabbing things in with your shoulder before you try and shut the door, you probably don’t want to do that. You should get rid of some of that stuff and organize your closet so that when people open the closets they are impressed and say “Wow! There’s so much closet space!”

So those are the 10 items that are the “don’ts” and the good ideas to do before you list your home. Hopefully you found that helpful!