Trying to sell a house in a down market can be difficult, but there are several things you can do to improve its marketability. By investing some money and sweat equity before it goes on the market, you can ensure that your home presents well, stands out from the crowd and doesn't turn off potential buyers so that you can sell quickly and at the best price.



Minimize the amount of personal items

While the family pictures and personal mementos may make it feel more like home for you, it may have exactly the opposite affect on potential home buyers. Too many pictures and knick-knacks may make it looks busy and cluttered, and distract them from truly seeing your homes unique architectural features and spacious rooms. It is also a fact that too many items in a room make the room look smaller, so the fewer the personal items you keep around, the bigger the space is going to feel.

Since you hope to move soon anyway, go ahead and box them up and put them in storage in advance of the open house or showing.

Neutral colors help sell a house. Consider painting walls a neutral color such as beige or taupe, to create a blank canvas for potential buyers. While vibrant colors may reflect your personal taste, it may not be the same as some of the home buyers that walk through your house. Neutral colors will help broaden the potential buyers, while brightening up your house at the same time.

Put a little sweat equity into your house. If there are problem areas in your home, get them fixed before the showing. It is a fact that buyers will over estimate the cost of repairs, resulting in a lower price that they will be willing to pay. When prospective buyers tour the house and see leak stains on the ceiling or peeling paint, they will also see future work and assume that bigger maintenance and repair issues are lurking behind those small problems.

By investing a little bit of money and time into your house, particularly in the kitchen and bathroom(s) will help make your house stand out from the rest on the market. The kitchen and bathroom are the two rooms that can sell the entire house The expenses you incur on the front end sprucing up your home will be cheaper than the profits you could lose by having to lower the price to meet buyer demand.

Take advantage of creative ways of marketing your house. Let's face it, the majority of younger home buyers use the internet for everything these days. Try using YouTube, a video sharing Web site, to introduce yourself and your house for free. Take home shoppers on a virtual tour and tell them about its uniqueness and strengths from a first-person point of view.

Whether listing through an agent, or doing it yourself, be sure to include plenty of pictures of the unique features of your house. Once listed, e-mail the link to your friends and ask them to forward it on to their network of contacts. In some cases, the house can be sold even before it hits the market by simply finding a friend of a friend that is looking for a house.

Be sure that you are using traditional marketing techniques to your best advantage. When photographing your home for promotional purposes, invest in a wide-angle lens for your camera so that rooms appear bigger and in proportion when they are displayed on Internet home listing sites or in marketing flyers. If you decide to create a virtual tour, look for professionals who will be able to film and upload your video using the best techniques and technology.

Think of non-traditional ways of having an open house. Rather than just announcing an open house, have a cheese and wine gathering to entice more people to stop by. If there are other houses in your neighbor that are for sale, have a parade of houses so that potential home buyers can see more houses in a short amount of time. The more people you can get through the door, the greater the chance of getting the money you want for your home.