This is part four in a five part series on preparing a real estate property for listing. In this post, I’ll be covering the importance of cleaning your listing. If the goal is to make the most profit off the sale, these blog posts will highlight the major steps you must take before the home becomes available for showings. Even if you just want a quick sale without much effort, some of these tips will be very useful to make sure you still earn top dollar for your effort. The past topics covered have been decluttering, upgrading, repairing, and landscaping.

So far you’ve decluttered, upgraded, made repairs, and landscaped your home or listing. But now you have a big mess on your hands. And by mess, I mean filth. The next logical step is to roll up those sleeves and clean! Whether you do it yourself, or hire a company, the home needs to be spotless. Even if you plan on staging the listing, the stager will want the home to be clean before putting their furniture and decorations in the home. Just make sure to perform a basic cleaning after staging is complete.

So many times I’ll see years’ worth of dust accumulation on fans and blinds. Extenuating circumstances aside, it’s disgusting and an immediate turn-off. Bathrooms are also a highly neglected area as well. Water stains on glass showers can be a pain to remove, but with a little effort and Glass Top Stove Cleaner, they can be spotless. A clean home is so much more than clean floors and decluttering. You have to look at the details. Your clients will be.

Not only is the visual appeal important to potential buyers, but so is the smell. A smell makes a big first impression. Now, the home doesn’t need to smell like roses or perfume, it just cannot smell like mold, pets, or smoke. If a potential client is walking through the home with a foul odor in their face the whole time, they won’t have a good experience. Even if they want to purchase the property, you’ve already lost money because they will want the home odor-free, or the price of the home to come down. This is not what you want as it reflectors poorly on the seller and Realtor.

In the case of my home sold last year, it had pet odor. We have dogs and dogs don’t always smell pleasant! Although we knew the home smelled like our dogs, we weren’t aware how bad it was. See, after having our carpets shampooed we thought the home smelled fantastic. To verify, we had a friend come over and we asked them what the home smelled like. Dog, they said. So now, we had to figure out what we missed. Turns out, when the dogs crawled under our bed, which we thoroughly cleaned, we hadn’t accounted for the underside of the mattress! Once we flipped the mattress over and gave it a good cleaning, the odor situation was resolved. So make sure you have another person come through to make sure the property smells fresh and clean.

In addition to thoroughly cleaning the inside of the home, cleaning the outside is just as important. You have to pressure wash your home and driveway. You have to clean up the garage and storage spaces. You have to clean off your roof and clean out the gutters.

These small, cheap, and important steps will make a great first impression and help you get the most money for your listing.