Julie and Daniel Desrochers from Desrochers Realty Group and Exp Realty shared their advice on things to do right now to get your home ready for selling in 2019. It’s a great time to do everything from fixing that leaky faucet to getting new bedspreads to cleaning out your closets!

Here’s their checklist:

• Have your mechanical systems in your home serviced and inspected
• Furnace or boiler (will have to wait till spring for a/c)
• Water heater, softener etc
• Fireplaces – have gas fireplaces tuned and cleaned have wood burning chimney’s swept
• Change filters in humidifier and air exchangers

• Asses your homes condition and create a list of items to work on that need to be repaired
• Do you have a leaking faucet or running toilet
• Lights that don’t work
• Broken handles or loose fixtures
• Grout in bathrooms repaired and caulk touched up.
• Create a list of paint touch ups on walls and baseboards and mark with pieces of tape

• Have a staging consultant out to the house to create a list of aesthetic changes that need to be made in the home.
• We have a stager that we provide to our sellers, she comes out and goes through the whole house to make a list of everything that needs to be done.
• A lot of times the list will consist of getting id or certain furniture items and replacing with something else or using different accessories.
• This time of the year is a great time to work on replacing those items. If 2 of your bedrooms need a new bedspread you can start looking for those times right now and take advantage of end of the year sales.
• If light fixtures and hardware need to be replaced this is also a great time to start looking for replacements and lining up contractors

• Organize closets and storage areas, get rid of unwanted items.
• We see a lot of sellers wait till the last minute to do this and this is something that should be done up front.
• If you start working on it now and make lists you can work on purging throughout the rest of the winter.
• If there are items you want to sell you can have time to get them listed online and get a fair price, not rushing in the spring to get rid of them and then end up giving them away.
• Start making piles for storage, charity/give away or sell
• Consider renting a storage unit or working with a stager that has a stage and store program

• Start minimizing personal items like removing family photos, heirlooms and children’s artwork and removing items you want to take with you
• This will give you time to find new pieces to put up in their place. A lot of times we see sellers that will have a lot of personal pictures on walls. Removing early gives you time to find other pieces of artwork to takes its place
• Often we find there are items in a home that customarily stay with the home that sellers want to take with them, like certain light fixtures or curtains, etc. If this is the case now is a good time to start finding items to replace those things