Are you looking to sell your home in the Winter? Mortgage rates have gone up and buyer demand has gone down. It’s getting a little bit harder to sell a house, coupled with the fact that we are heading into the dead of winter, which is seasonally a time when less homes sell anyway. So how can you get your home sold in the winter? We’re gonna give you eight tips coming up. My name is Eric Sztanyo from Keller Williams Realty and Team Sztanyo.com, where we are helping you find your home and strengthen your family. Thank you guys so much for watching and subscribing to the channel. It means so much to me. It’s helping this Sztanyo Clanyo grow a little bit. I want to get into how to sell your home in the winter.
A lot of people, you know, you’re typically waiting until springtime because that’s when you know everything’s green. You get the most buyers out there. Home prices might go up, but some of you watching this, you might be forced to sell your home in the winter. Maybe you’re relocating or you know have got a different job and you’ve gotta sell now. You can’t wait until spring. So we’re gonna give you tips on how to get that done.
Now, winter can still be a good time to sell the house. You just might have to work a little bit harder to make the home feel warm and cozy and kind of avoid the dreariness of the season overall. So let’s get into the eight tips to help sell your home in the winter.
1.Snow removal is important. Snow can be hazardous. And if you have buyers who are looking to come show your house, you don’t want any ice, you don’t want any snow, make sure your driveway is shoveled. Make sure your sidewalk is shoveled clean. Be prepared to have salt on hand so that you can lay down rock salt. Make sure it’s safe for everyone who is coming to see the home. It’s important to take that time to clear the driveway and the sidewalk so that nobody gets hurt.
2. Illuminate rooms with as much light as possible. Winter isn’t known for consistent sunshine, so let in natural light when you can. If you don’t have the best view looking out your windows, go ahead and close the drapes or the blinds on that one and light up the room in different ways so that people aren’t focused at the bad vie. Before you head out of the home and leave it open for buyers to come in. Turn on every light in the house, even the bathrooms, the closets everywhere, just to get as much illumination as you can. If you do have a dark corner in the house somewhere, consider lighting that up with a spotlight or some kind of accent light.
3. Make sure the house is sparkling clean. This should kind of go without saying. We talk about this a lot on the channel where you want to declutter the house, but also you want to give it a deep, deep clean before you’re letting those buyers come in. Especially if you do tip number two and you’re lighting up everything. You don’t want people to see dirty corners or cobwebs. You want to do a deep, deep clean. Now, most of these tips we’re giving you guys shouldn’t cost you a lot of money, but make sure you’re doing this deep, clean, even bringing in professional help if you need to, a couple of weeks before you’re getting the house ready to go active on the market. So scrub every surface, get rid of those cobwebs, and tackle those dust bunnies that are hiding underneath the bed. Do everything you can to make sure the house is clean and ready to show well. right, tip number
4. Keep your home at a comfortable temperature. Maybe you like to light a fire and blast the temperature up above 72 degrees in the winter. You want it to be warm, but not too hot. Likewise, you might be someone who’s trying to save on energy bills and keeping it under maybe 65 degrees or below. I know I had a college roommate who was famous when we lived together in college, who would always go throughout our apartment, turn off the lights and say “Pennies- -pennies” Like the electric bill was running up by pennies everywhere. So that was kind of the running joke. He’s now a pastor in the city and he’s pretty awesome – Shout out to Queen City Church! But, I always think about that when trying to save on energy bill is Brian shouting at me “Pennies, turn that off.” …So you wanna be somewhere in the middle, right, not above 72, 2 degrees, not somewhere below 65 degrees. Keep it around 68 to 70 degrees, a nice comfortable temperature for your showings.
5. You wanna create an environment that is cozy and inviting. Winter’s all about soft fuzzy blankets, maybe a warm fire and cozy in up somewhere with a nice good book. You wanna kind of create that atmosphere with your house and you can create a welcoming vibe for your buyers by just doing a few simple things:
- Lay a soft throw blanket on the back of a chair or a sofa.
- Set your dining room table as though you are gonna be sitting down for a nice dinner.
- Create a reading nook complete with a chair, side table, and a few good books
- You can have a few decorations for the holidays, but don’t go overboard now that especially we’re past Christmas.
- Consider hiring a home stager who can ensure that the rooms flow nicely into one another. Position the furniture properly and make sure certain features are spotlighted. I know I said most of these tips are gonna not cost you much. This also wouldn’t cost you that much. You can hire home stagers by an hourly rate. That might cost you a hundred or $200, something like that. If you need some connections here locally, give us a shout. We have some great home stagers we work with.
6. Play some calming music. Have you ever noticed when you’re going in the store or a shop, you’re at the mall, maybe you’re at a car lot, there’s some kind of soft music playing in the background. Well, why is that? It’s because it helps you calm down. It helps you take away any anxiety or nervousness and put you in a place where you’re ready to buy. You can do the same thing with the buyers in your house. We enjoy soft music. Preferably classical, I think makes a lot of sense. Just don’t do something where you’re using the radio or Pandora cuz you don’t want commercials invading into that nice, calm, welcoming sound space.
7. Avoid strong aromas. It’s a good idea to make your home smell nice and inviting. In fact, when I’m out with buyers, I see it when we open the front door and it smells like smoke or pet. They’re like, Ugh. It instantly puts off a bad impression in their mind. But if you open the door and the home smells good, it’s just feels like home. In fact, I’ll even hear buyers say those words, oh, this one feels homey. Well, part of that is might be the music, might be the light, might be all the things you’ve set up for the mood. And another part of that is the sense of smell. Now you never know what smells people might be sensitive to. And I would avoid going for the approach of strong perfumes or maybe even really strong scented candles or those plug-ins into the wall. If you have to do that, that’s better than nothing. But maybe a better approach might be something like warm cider, simmering on the stove. Make sure you’re not gonna burn down the house, but something that’s more natural and doesn’t overwhelm the smell senses.
8. This is kind of a creative idea, but it’s to present interesting tidbits about the home. So what do I mean by that? Well, if you know some features about the house that are unique, buyers love to know that stuff. So you can kind of put out cards maybe around the house with just little interesting facts. That stuff is really interesting to the buyers. They love knowing about that stuff. And again, it makes it feel like its own space, like a personal home to them.
So some ideas might be that the hardwood fours are original and you can mention that, or the staircase, the handrail was handcrafted, something like that. And then of course, on the bigger things that you’ve maybe done updates on the house, make sure you’ve worked with your realtor, like whether you had a new roof or a bathroom update or a kitchen update, or how old the furnace is, things like that. You wanna have that all listed so the buyers also have that information.
Sell House Your Home in the Winter with Team Sztanyo
I know these winter tips might seem kind of small or inconsequential or they might even seem like too much work to do, but I promise you that doing these things helps your listing stand out from the other homes that the buyers are looking at. Cozy staging and a little bit of extra effort on your part on the front end is gonna go a long way to helping the buyers picture themselves in the home, getting you those offers that are gonna be for a higher price and faster in terms of days on market before you get those offers. So in this market, when things are starting to shift a little bit, and it’s a little bit harder to sell your house than it has been the last few years, these are the things that will help your listings stand out and get your home sold for the most money and the fastest. All right, guys, I hope those tips were helpful for you. If they were, please give us a thumbs up. Make sure to subscribe to the channel. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. We’ll see you next.