You want to sell your Bakersfield house, and you want to get top dollar.
Excellent!
But “What do I need to do to sell my house in Bakersfield“?
Here are some tips on how to get your home ready to sell for the very highest offer that you can get. After all, everyone wants to get the most they can, right?
*NOTE: These instructions are if you’re looking to get full retail value for your house sale. Most likely this will require a good amount of time, money, and effort to achieve, and the decision must be made between time and money. You can either use your time to get the most money possible, or you can sell for a small discount for a quick no-hassle transaction. If you don’t want to do the things below… or don’t have the time or money to do the things below… you can still sell your Bakersfield house fast for a fair value in a win-win sale that’ll save you time and expense.
1) Clean, clean and clean. Even vacant houses get dusty and dirty, so keep it up! Nothing short of gleaming perfection will impress buyers. You would be amazed at how much dust can accumulate even after a few days. If you plan to list your house, make sure you clean it every few days so it stays in top showable condition. If you’re not a total clean freak, hire someone who is to help you out until you sell.
If you’re messy or disorganized, consider finding somewhere else to live while you show your house. Maybe you can bribe your cleanest friend to trade houses with you? Seriously, keeping everything immaculate really helps buyers feel comfortable in your space. Why? Because they do not want to live in your space, they want to buy their own space. They want to make everything their own, and they want the perfect blank canvas to work with. Nothing stops people faster from buying than feeling grossed out. Make sure to leave them with a great impression. Otherwise, someone else will sell their house fast, while you are left still holding an empty house.
2) Cultivate a cohesive, neutral style. You don’t have to paint everything off-white. In fact, some subtle colors can really help change the perception of spaces – for example, a soft yellow will help brighten up a dark kitchen, while a deep dark blue or green will help a bright bedroom to feel like a calm place to sleep (but be careful, dark colors will also make rooms feel small). This is where the touch of an expert can be very helpful. There are people that work with these issues all day every day. Reach out to professionals in the industry and ask for referrals or advice on staging your home to make the best impression. Buyers of Bakersfield is connected to many people throughout Bakersfield and we would be more than happy to give advice or recommend the services of people we know and trust.
Spend the money to get high-quality paint and professional help. Subconsciously people will often pay more money for a property that has just the right colors and perfect textures – it makes the home feel better, even though it is only paint. Remember, this is where someone wants to live for a long time, they want it to feel like home, not just look good on paper.
Optical illusions are real, and psychologists study this stuff all the time. Look up the best ways to paint and layout a house to make it feel bigger and more comfortable.
And make sure you don’t neglect the outside and leave things unbalanced. The color of the outside of the house can make a big difference as well. Look around your neighborhood and see what others are doing and if there are any themes. Buyers might not want to stick out like a sore thumb in their brand new neighborhood. On the other hand, some neighborhoods take pride in each house being unique and different, and you wouldn’t want to make your new buyer feel bland and boring.
3) Fix or replace anything that’s broken. It may seem unnecessary to spend money on that outdated and barely working dishwasher that might just get replaced again anyway, but most buyers will use home inspections as a way to get you to come down on your price. As the seller, it will usually end up costing you a lot more to pay for neglected maintenance or have a buyer use it to their advantage. And of course, nobody wants to be guilty of fraud by acting like everything is perfectly fine when it knowingly was broken. Taking shortcuts and sidestepping laws and best practices will almost always come back to haunt you. It’s just not worth it.
It might be a good idea to get ahead of the buyers and hire an independent home inspector yourself. They will come through and tell you the things that you should fix up, and generally, they will give you a good deal on a return visit if necessary. This puts the buyers at ease and gives you the advantage of taking care of problems early before they turn into big negotiating tactics.
4) Make only necessary improvements. One of the biggest mistakes people make when getting their house ready to sell is over-improving. They spend so much money on customized extras and add-ons that they can’t recoup in the final sale. Spending thousands of dollars on changing a quartz countertop to a granite countertop doesn’t make sense if it only increases the property value by a few hundred bucks. Make sure you are not spending money to replace functional and already good-looking parts of the house when it is not necessary.
Paint is about the only safe investment – it’s easy to overspend on almost everything else, and it’s easy to get ripped off by unscrupulous contractors. Make sure you get a few different bids for contractors, and if you’re using an agent, ask them what they think should be done to the house. Remember the objective is to sell you house fast and make the most money possible. There is a balance between these two, and a good realtor will know exactly what will give you the most bang for you buck.
5) Get expert opinions. You should definitely try to find at least a few decent real estate brokers that will provide you with honest and fair values on your house, but be honest with them. If you want to market the property yourself, don’t make enemies by lying about your intentions. Great brokers are rare, but they make more money for their clients than they earn. They are a great resource to have, and it is a good idea to stay on friendly terms with them. Maybe offer to take them to lunch or bring some donuts into their office as a gesture of good will.
6) Have a really great marketing plan. Again, great brokers earn their value by doing this work and spreading the advertising expenses across many clients. It’s pretty expensive and time-consuming to start from scratch on your own, but if you’re already a marketing expert you’re ahead of the pack.
If you’re not, spend the time listening to what the best brokers do to sell houses fast in Bakersfield – just to educate yourself on your options.
7) Get a cash offer. We buy houses all over the Bakersfield area, and we do all the work so you don’t have to deal with any of this stuff.
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Don’t Want To Do The Things Above Yourself? But Still Want To Sell Your Bakersfield California House Fast?
While everyone wants to get as much as they possibly can from their house sale… not everyone can do the things or wants to do the things required to sell it at full retail value to an end buyer. Time is a valuable resource, and many people would rather not sink the next several months, maybe even years, into this one project that they have absolutely no experience in.
Doing the repairs, cleaning the property up, upgrading the property, marketing the property… those all take money and can take lots of time, especially if this is not something that you do for a living. Can you imagine someone else trying to do your job without any prior experience? Chances are, it would take them a while to learn how to be as successful as you.
If you have the funds to do these things... AND you can wait the 3-9 months, probably toward the higher end of that scale with the current 2020 market, it takes to sell houses in this market… then you’ll be better off financially to do those things then list it on the MLS (the main property listing service that real estate agents use).
If you don’t have the funds to do these things... AND can’t wait months to sell your house… then you may be a perfect fit for our local Bakersfield house buying service. You’ll submit basic info about your house over here on our website, we’ll evaluate your house, we’ll make you a fair all-cash offer on your house, and you can decide if it’s a fit for you.
Then we can close FAST (often times within 7 days) if you need us to.
Take a look at what we’ll pay you not to do anything versus the time, expense and hassle involved with doing it on your own. Oftentimes, you won’t actually be saving that much money by trying to do everything yourself. We have the connections and tools in place to get work done cost-efficiently and time-effectively because this is what we do for a living. We add our own value to all the projects we take on. This is good news for you, because you can leverage our resources and expertise to your advantage by getting the money you would have gotten anyway, without the time and hassle that it take most other people.
So if you’re still asking “what do I need to do to sell my house in Bakersfield“… now you have 2 solid options.
Either…
- Fix the property up and get it all nice and ready with the steps above to sell it at top dollar
- Let us do all of the work and we’ll make you a cash offer on your house in AS-IS condition. This saves you time, money, and gets the hassle off of your hands.
If you need to sell a property near Bakersfield, we can help you.
We buy properties like yours from people who need to sell fast.