Six Reasons To Paint
Before Listing Your Home For Sale

When you find yourself in the position to decide what to do (or not do) to prepare your home for sale,

always keep this in mind: 

The buyers in your market will be scheduled to view many homes within a certain price range, which have similar features of interest to them. 

Some homes will be a “NO WAY!- NEXT?” home, some will be so forgettable that some buyers won’t even remember viewing them (this happens more often with non-staged vacant homes). You want your home to stand out as the winner- the “YES!” in a sea of “NOOOOO”.

A fresh coat of paint is among the top 4 most important things to do (along with de-cluttering, professional cleaning and of-course, staging) to insure a fast and very successful sale. Here’s why you absolutely should paint:

1.  It offers the opportunity to first, mud over and then sand any damage on the walls (small holes, scratches, dents, imperfections) that just happen over the years. In my house most of the wall damage is caused by my angry vacuum or my amazing art hanging technique.This fix takes mere moments of effort but it makes a huge difference in the appearance of the house.

2.  Paint is the ultimate cleaner. If you’re painting yourself, it’s suggested that you pre-clean the walls, especially removing webs and dust, greasy stuff, candle wax splatter, etc. But all the rubbing in the world (while it will remove existing paint) will not correct everything the way a fresh coat of paint will. Paint makes everything clean and pristine and buyers love clean and pristine.

3.  It creates a strong impressions of “freshness” and  “newness”.

4.  It creates a perfect blank canvas for your stager to come in and do their magic.

5.  The right new paint choices, more on that here, will correct any “taste-specific” choices that have been made previously and these new choices will appeal visually to the highest percentage of buyers in your current market.

6.  It signals to the potential buyer that they will not have to go through the immediate work of painting the entire house if they choose to buy this one, which is a huge bonus for a buyer.

In terms of return on investment, painting is a big one. The positive visual effect of painting is just, well, obvious. 

If you fancy yourself a painter, go for it! If not, there are tons of pro painters out there, who would be happy to give you a quote and some paint colour advice too (they have a lot of experience with paint colours and such). We suggest getting several quotes and going with the one that feels the best.

As always, best wishes for a quick and very successful sale!