PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — With spring officially on the calendar, homeowners trying to sell their homes in Aroostook County are looking to clean up their properties for appearance sake and to attract potential buyers.
There are a number of facts that sellers should be aware of as they prepare to host potential buyers at their homes, according to County real estate agents.
“Potential home buyers notice everything,” according to Bill Levasseur, a real estate agent at Key Realty in Presque Isle.
“Buyers are going to start searching your home the minute they walk in the front door,” he said during a recent interview. “The cleanliness of the home obviously impacts whether or not people are going to be interested in purchasing it.”
Levasseur said there are a number of tips he gives potential sellers to avoid issues.
“The thing that I tell my clients to do is to have a friend walk in the front door with them and see what they can spot as being some inexpensive items that can easily be spruced up,” he said. “Perhaps there is a welcome mat that needs to be replaced, or something that doesn’t really cost a thing, like having the windows washed inside and out. Make sure to walk through the home and look right down at your socks and shoes. If you can see dirt on the floors or that they need to be polished, you know that anyone buying the home is going to notice the same thing.”
Scot Walker, a realtor at First Choice Realty in Houlton, said that the key to an inexpensive spring makeover that will attract buyers is to reduce clutter and depersonalize the home.
“Buyers want to see themselves in the home,” he said. “That is also what you want. Clean off tables and shelves and make the home look open and bigger. Take personal pictures off the wall. It is a different story if it is a child’s room. Don’t worry so much about that. Make the home look bright and spacious.”
He said that an owner should pay special attention to parts of the home that look “worn out and used.”
“Look at carpets and throw rugs,” he said. “If they look like they should be replaced, do it. If something needs a quick coat of paint and you can afford to do that too, you should. Concentrate on the common areas, the places where the buyer is going to walk through and see themselves spending a lot of time.”
Laura McMahon of Caribou said that when she sold her mother’s home two years ago, her entire family pitched in for a “rigorous spring cleaning.”
“That really helped, because my mother died when she was 80-years-old and obviously she could not keep up with all the dirt as much as she had in the past,” McMahon said. “She also had a smaller, older home, and that isn’t as popular as some of the open concept homes that people are looking for now.”
McMahon said she was advised by her real estate agent to “declutter the home as much as possible,” by removing extra furniture and knick-knacks.
“That was a lot of work for us,” she joked. “Because she had collected a lot over the years.”
Walker also advised that doing simple jobs make a huge difference, such as cleaning windows, mowing lawns and fixing any loose siding.
“The big thing is to keep the house clean and presentable,” he said. “You don’t want people to judge the home before they even get inside. I tell my clients that they have no idea how important it is to declutter a garage. That goes such a long way with the buyer, because a cluttered garage gives the impression that the homeowners are messy or disorganized. That definitely isn’t want you want.”
