Tips for selling your house in 27 days

 1. Find a realtor who sold a house like yours. I reviewed all the sold house listings for the last year. I was looking for a house sold in "as-is" condition. I found a couple examples. I picked the realtor for the house that sold the quickest. I took that as a sign that it was priced well. Then, take your realtor's advice for pricing and marketing strategy. 

2. Create designated zones in your house for: 

Donate/Sell - We used our dining room. When the table got full, we took a run to the Salvation Army truck. We didn't have to time to mess with selling over the internet. 

Maybe Keep -  This can be stored in the garage or a storage unit. We bought large storage bins with a handle and wheels. 

Must Keep but can't be house for showings - We moved bookshelves out of the house and set up a zone in the garage. This was mostly stuff that had lived on counters throughout the house. 

Must Keep and can be in the house for showing - This will just have a new home. 

3. For sorting,  I recommend starting with your drawers and under bathroom sinks. You are going to need that space for keep items during photos and showings. We actually found it easier to sort items into must keep and not. Then, we'd go back through the "not" pile more carefully into maybe keep and donate. The rule was to keep anything we weren't 100% sure we wanted to donate. This helps speed up decisions. It turned out a lot of that got donated when we got ready to move the items to the storage locker. 

4. If you can, get out of the house for the initial showings. Things went so much faster when we told our realtor we'd be out of town. We listed on a Thursday. We are going to be gone until the following Sunday. I recommend at least being gone until Monday. They could easier set up showings and a open house with no worries about us. It also gave us a deadline / check in point. 

5. If you can hire a hauling company or someone like College Hunks Hauling Junk to come during the week before closing. There's just so much last minute stuff that needed to be trashed / go to the dump. It's easier having them do it. 

6. Hire someone to clean the empty house. It's not a big deal. You only have to leave it swept clean, but I wish we would have had someone else clean up.