If you’re looking to sell your house this winter, you’re probably going to get a lot of advice.
You’re going to hear about minimizing your furniture, taking pictures off the walls, and basically minimizing your personal touches. Another thing you can do to help present your home in the best manner possible is considering the condition of your floor surfaces.
You may have wall-to-wall carpeting in a lot of the rooms, especially bedrooms, and it’s at least four or five years old. There’s no need to replace it before selling your home; the new homeowner will likely want to replace it with the color and type of carpeting they want.
However, it probably is four or five years old but looks eight or 10 years old. If it looks old, haggard, threadbare, stained, and has other issues, it’s a good idea to have a professional carpet cleaning service come in and help restore it.
Depending on the age, condition, and other factors, they may be able to bring it back to almost like new condition or at least a lot better looking than it is now.
You can assume a potential home buyer will look beyond that when considering purchasing your home, and they might very well. They may assume they’re going to replace the carpeting anyway, but if the carpet looks terrible it may impact their decision to buy your home.
That means you might be getting offers quite a bit lower than you would hope. It’s a small investment that could pay dividends when you consider higher offers and more of them.
Keep in mind that people are reluctant to change their first impressions when house hunting. If they get a bad first impression from your home because of the cleanliness of your floors (or lack thereof), you could end up paying for that in the sale price.