Tips for Successfully Selling Your Home in the Fall

Along with the shorter days and moody temperatures, fall brings a number of challenges for home marketing. But with a little interest in the elements and a few innovative advertising techniques, you can take your own home from “For Sale” to “Sold” before the last leaf falls.

Focus on the furnace

When capable buyers stroll through your private home, it needs to appear inviting and comfortably warm. If you’re selling a home in the cooler months of fall, it’s more important than ever to have an experienced heating contractor inspect the heating system and perform any essential maintenance to ensure it’s running efficiently and quietly. (Mysterious, rattling noises will scare off customers.) Also remember to clean the furnace month after month, even when your private home is not in use, to keep the indoor air as clean and dirt-free as possible.

Call the chimney sweep

The cooler temperatures of fall make fireplaces especially attractive to able home buyers. Your real estate agent may even recommend lighting a fireplace if you have a showing on a particularly anemic day. Over the summer, however, birds, squirrels and other small animals may have nested in the chimney, so it’s a very good concept to hire a professional chimney sweep to smooth out the fireplace and chimney before you sell the home. A warm, flickering flame is inviting, but smoke trapped inside the home by a clogged chimney is not.

Celebrate fall

Decorate your front door with a tasteful wreath of fall leaves and pine cones, or spruce up the entryway with a pumpkin, a pot of blooming flowers and a brand-new fall-themed welcome mat. Keep it simple, though. Don’t overdo it, and stay away from Halloween decorations: Cobwebs strung along the porch railing can look messy and distracting.

Make glass sparkle

Summer storms can cause streaky house windows, muddy typhoon doors and layers of dust on exterior window trim. While you may not notice the grime now, buyers will. Before you start showing your own home, remove the displays from the house windows, then take them out of the doors and hose them down to remove collected dirt and bugs. Wipe dust and dirt from the outside window frames, and then wash the windows and all the glass on the doors until everything shines like new.

Keep it bright

With fall comes shorter days and longer shadows, which can make a home seem dreary and gloomy. During this dark time of year, you can’t rely on plant-based lighting fixtures to make your home look its best. Before a viewing, turn on all the lights in the home, including table and floor lamps. Since some viewings may extend past sunset, you need to make sure you have enough outdoor lighting. If you don’t already have lighting along the path outside the front door, consider adding solar lighting to provide some protection in addition to visible enchantment.

Don’t leave leaves lying around

Fall leaves can be beautiful, but if they litter your yard, they can make your entire home look unkempt. While many homeowners wait until the wood is bare before raking up leaves while your home is accessible, leaves need to be mopped up frequently to keep the backyard tidy. In addition, have your own home’s gutters wiped clean as quickly as the leaves fall achieved. The last aspect you need is for potential customers to see water running over the clogged gutters when it rains during a viewing.

Bring fall indoors

Don’t limit seasonal decor to the exterior of your home. Bring the colors and spirit of fall into your living spaces, where customers will marvel at the homey atmosphere. Leave the Halloween decorations aside, but feel free to throw an autumn-colored throw over the back of a sofa or on an access bench, and display a centerpiece of decorative pumpkins, pine cones and warm russet candles on the dining room table for some seasonal fun.