Getting Your Home Ready to Sell: A Room-by-Room Checklist

The single biggest lever most sellers have is preparation, and most of it does not require a contractor. Here is the list I walk through with my sellers before we put a home on the market.

Start outside

Buyers form an opinion before they open the front door. Trim back anything overgrown, edge the lawn, pull weeds from the walkway cracks, and pressure-wash the driveway if you can borrow the equipment. Paint or scrub the front door and replace a tired doormat. In our climate, a few fresh drought-tolerant plants near the entry go a long way.

Entry and living areas

• Remove about half of what is on every surface. Not all of it — half.
• Take down most family photos so buyers can picture themselves there.
• Open every blind and curtain. Replace any burnt-out bulbs, and match the color temperature across a room so it doesn't read as patchy.
• Rearrange furniture to show the walkways, even if it means putting a piece in the garage for a few weeks.

Kitchen

• Clear the counters down to two or three items.
• Clean inside the oven, the microwave, and the refrigerator — buyers open them.
• Degrease the range hood and the backsplash.
• If the cabinet hardware is dated, swapping the pulls is an inexpensive afternoon that visibly modernizes the room.

Bathrooms

• Re-caulk anything discolored. It's a small job that reads as "well maintained."
• Fresh white towels, nothing personal on the counter, shower curtain clean or replaced.
• Fix any slow drain or running toilet now rather than during inspections.

Bedrooms

• Beds made, neutral bedding, closets no more than about two-thirds full so they read as spacious.
• If a room is currently a gym or storage, stage it back into a bedroom if you can — buyers count bedrooms with their eyes, not the listing sheet.

Garage, yard, and the stuff nobody wants to deal with

A packed garage makes a house feel smaller than it is. This is the moment to donate, sell, or rent a storage unit for a couple of months. In the backyard, define the spaces — a seating area, a clean patio, a tidy side yard — so buyers see usable outdoor living rather than dirt.

Repairs: what's worth doing

Handle the visible small stuff: sticking doors, torn screens, cracked switch plates, chipped paint, leaky faucets. Individually they are trivial; collectively they tell a buyer the home has been neglected. For anything major, talk to me first — not every big repair is worth doing before a sale, and some are better disclosed and negotiated.

Last step before photos

A deep clean, every light on, every surface clear. Professional photos are the first showing, and almost every buyer decides from them whether to come see the house in person.

If you would like me to walk your home and put together a prioritized version of this list specific to your property, that's a free visit and usually takes under an hour.