Flip This House in 5 Simple Steps

Here are 5 steps to prepare your home to sell with a “Cosmetic Rehab:”

1. Start with the “Bottleneck” Item

The trick to keeping your rehabs short, is to start with the “bottleneck” item. The thing that will take the longest to accomplish. With single family homes, like this one, the bottleneck is usually landscaping. As you will see in the following videos, we start with taking the yard down and after a few weeks of water and fertilizer, it is greener and fuller and adds tremendously to curb appeal. Tighten up bushes and trees, fill in low spots in the yard with sand, pull weeds, etc. Whatever it takes to make it look good.

2. Paint

Painting has an ROI in thousands of percents. A 5-gallon bucket of paint costs around $120, but makes your home look 10 times better. 80% of painting is preparation, so take the time to put down drop clothes, mask with tape as necessary and prime walls that need a color change. When selecting colors for painting, lean towards “light and bright.” Lighter colors make spaces look larger and more inviting.

3. Declutter

Walk around the property with “buyer’s eyes.” Identify and remove the things that are distracting. We want buyers to be able to focus on the nice landscaping, fresh paint, and other upgrades. Common distractions include: piles of CMU block or bricks, bikes, yard equipment, bird poop, etc. Work to clear these things out, so your buyer’s can enjoy their experience at your home.

4. Cleaning

It is well worth it to hire professional cleaners to give your home an in-depth cleaning. You can expect to spend $600-1000 to clean a large home. Make sure they catch the dust on the fan blades, window screens, all surfaces, etc, etc. The ROI can be 1000%.

5. Staging

The last step is staging or adding “perceived value.” Unlike landscaping and painting, which add REAL value to a home, staging is only temporary and will be gone before closing. Staging helps buyers visualize the home nicely furnished and helps to add scale to the space.

Simple Fixes Can Add Thousands to the Sales Price

We have found that the average homeowner can add around 10% to their sales price by following these 5 simple steps:

1. Landscaping
2. Painting
3. Decluttering
4. Cleaning
5. Staging

These 5 areas can have returns on investment in the hundreds to thousands of percents. We look at the sale of a property as an opportunity to earn large amounts of money (and save costly days on market) in a short period of time.

For example, if you have a home that would sell for $500k, in average condition, and then $550k (+10%) after a cosmetic rehab… that additional $50k gain is equivalent to the average person’s annual income in Hawaii!

These 5 steps can take 3-4 weeks and cost $3-5000. I don’t know of too many LEGAL ways a family can earn a year’s salary in 3-4 weeks!

We hope you find these tips and tricks useful and all the best on your next cosmetic rehab!

Aloha,

Jake