Get rid of any small items you do not want to "walk" away. Less is more. Wipe down all faucets so they gleam. Make the place look as much as possible that no one actually lives there but someone could just bring their own toothbrush and move in. I even hid my toothbrushes

Make sure all closets are spotless and towels etc are folded the same etc. You want it to look more like a photo shoot than reality. No matter how old you want it to look as new as possible

If need be, rent a storage locker. That's what we did. Wipe down everything.

Why not post pics so we can give some advice

Declutter and clean. Then clean again. Including corners, baseboards and Windows. Make sure the bathroom sparkles, including the mirrors. Do not use air freshener of any kind. Be sure the house looks bright, turn on lights and open curtains.

Good luck

Remove all trash cans and bathroom throw rugs. Remove all small appliances from kitchen counters. Remove all items from the bathroom counters and bedroom dressers. Remove any small throw rugs in hallways and anywhere else they may be found. Stash any personal pictures. You don't want them to know what you look like. Put out fresh towels in the bathroom. Turn on every light in the house. Fresh, blooming flowers in pots at the front door. I wash the exterior of my entire home, using a brush and not with a pressure washer. But, some people may call that over kill. At the very least, wash the exteriors of entry doors. Wash all of the switch plate covers and run a soapy cloth over any interior door with fingerprints. Mow the law, put away the trash cans and cut back the shrubs. Mulch all of the beds. Put away the kids toys in the yard. If you have kids, put away their toys, too. Someone with children may come through. You want them to focus on the house, not on dealing with wayward children.

I do this for all showings, too. Selling a house is hard work.

Yikes! lol

Do a 'smell test' before the open house.

If you are too familiar with the smell in your house and cannot tell any difference, ask a friend or neighbor to help if needed.

Turn on the lights. Even if it's daytime.

Yes to all of the above. A storage unit can be your best staging tool. We put almost everything in ours that we didn't need for daily living. People do look inside cabinets and closets, so let them see clean ones w/ room to spare.

Best tip from my realtor: make sure all travel lanes are clear, i.e., there is room for a LARGE person to walk freely in every room without ever brushing against or having to sidle past furniture, plants, or items of decor. Cozy is not your friend when it comes to foot traffic.

Subliminal influence is important too. Starting the year before we sold, we replaced all the wall switches and plates w/ crisp white ones as well as any older electrical outlets. We had expected our small but immaculate (and pretty!) kitchen to be the star of the open house, but the single thing most remarked upon was the wrought iron stair railing. Years earlier we had had the white, gloppy, dirt-ingrained paint sandblasted and powder coated in espresso. A surprising number of people (including several realtors) actually fondled the railing while marveling at how up to date the 1956 house looked.

Yikes x 2. If Homechef's to-do list was an actual prerequisite for selling a home, I would never move.

Selling a house is hard work. That's why so many people have issues selling their homes. This whole HGTV thing has always been true. Now, it's just on TV.

My DH hates it when our homes are on the market. I get really obsessed. But, I sell my house quickly, for good money in a very short period of time.

The washing the house thing sounds like over kill. If you wash the exterior you will remove grime, mildew, spider webs and bug juice. It will save your homes paint job. The house will sparkle. We wash our house twice a year in the Spring and Fall.

One data point: The people who paid us $50K over asking price told us they loved the house because it was spotless and because we had 6" crown moulding in every room which cost us $1000 in materials and $2000 in labor. We did similar to homechef's list.

I pretty much followed homechefs list too. I paid someone to brush and pressure wash the vinyl siding and also clean the windows. I don't like doing the 2nd storey but by hiring someone I got out of doing any windows!! :)

my list was a bit more complicated. It included removing all traces of the dogs, their crates, beds, bowls and toys.

Plus I had to make both barns spotless and load both dogs into the truck snd loading my livestock into the stock trailer and leaving the property.

But we sold with a full price offer. Twice actually. Both full price. The first one failed with financing, they needed a cosigner and the cosigner walked.

For the month, we mostly lived out of our truck. I had the back filled with stuff I removed and just stored there. The dogs in the backseat. Lots of sandwiches and stuff like that was eaten in the truck.

After all that, my truck is a sty. I should book a day of detailing for it. I'm so over scrubbing things, often several times a day! I'm enjoying having a few dirty dishes in the sink and some random dirt on the floors!!

it was very hard work, with many horrible things happening, but now that we can maybe move forward, maybe it was worth it!

probably it will feel more worth it once we start closing on properties!!

Add me to the list. 4 days, multiple offers. Over asking.

I was surprised how clean the house looked after I pressure washed it. It's not hard. I had a small homeowner-style washer and that worked fine.

I have a thing about windows so mine always look good.

I polished the furnace and water heater even! You ever see the engine room on a ship?

For the open house we kennel the pets. All pet stuff removed off site.

The realtor for the people who bought the house said she'd never seen anything quite like it. I told her we loved our house and wanted it to look good. It did.

My condo was the only one to sell in our building in the upper price range in a 6 month period. (The only other two to sell sold for over $300,000 less than ours) And we got the 3rd highest price for a sold condo in our building with the exception of the penthouses. Why? Besides our place being completely updated with new appliances, paint, stone, flooring, etc, we did like homechef said.

We staged and we cleaned. Our linen closet had some empty shelves. Same with our clothes closet shelves and my studio's shelves. We had fresh flowers in the rooms. Baseboards, light switches, door handles and the space around the door handles were all spotless. Beds were made, toilet seats were put down, towels were hung with military precision, nothing but a basket, a pretty handmade pair of salt shakers, a white set of flour/sugar canisters and a spoon holder were on our kitchen countertops.

The dog's water bowl, bedding, toys, etc were all put away out of site. (The dogs bed was always thrown under our bed before a showing) No evidence of a pet (unless you opened cupboards and even then it was neatly arranged) for anyone viewing the place since there are some folks who do not like animals.

Clothes in our closets were lined up in color order (think rainbow) and by type, so sleeveless tops with sleeveless tops, skirts with skirts, etc. Shoes too. I even lined everything up inside my kitchen cabinets, including the spices.

There was nothing that implied anything might be "off". For example, we have a hepa filter in our bedroom for my allergies. The hepa filter was put away out of sight before a showing.

In the same realm, when I redid the master bathroom, I didn't leave enough room near the shower for hooks or a towel bar. Oops! So we had a portable towel stand. That too got put away out of sight when we had showings. No reason to remind people that there wasn't a towel bar.

Here's a link to our photos. The way it looks in the photos is the way we kept it staged: cpartist's sold condo

Yes it's hard work, but so worth it if you want to sell.

Every showing is an opportunity to snag a live one and reel it in. Spotless says you are serious.

"Every showing is an opportunity to snag a live one and reel it in. Spotless says you are serious." homechef has lots of great advice.

We accepted an offer in just over a week. FSBO on zillow. Our house was spotless. We had fresh paint, all new blinds, refreshed landscaping and professional pictures. Results? In a week we had 60+ people save it, many showings, lots of calls and in the end multiple offers.

We did everything homechef listed. Plus we got a new welcome mat, repainted our front door, mailbox and post. Got new address numbers and even a return air filter with charcoal to keep house odor free. The most stressful to me was keeping it show ready with three kids.

Do you have to do all these things. No. Not everyone expects it. Think when you go the extra mile it shows and leads to a sense of urgency. Getting you a quick offer and saving you much time in the long run.

We had a few serious lookers today -- feeling positive. Thanks!

I'm sure the hard-core preparation helps, but I also think it's overkill in some markets. A few months ago we sold our home in 9 days at full asking price without doing any of that stuff. We just had the house staged (at the realtor's expense) and kept it reasonably clean.

I don't think we could have gotten much more money for the house unless we had invested in expensive renos, in which case the cost of the renos would have offset the extra $$ from the sale.

During the 9 days before we got a firm offer, I found it very stressful to read about the lengths people go to when putting their house up for sale. It would have been helpful for me to hear someone say that it's not necessary to twist yourself into a pretzel to sell a house.

We sold another house 16 years ago and did virtually nothing to get it ready, not even much clean-up, and still got a pretty good offer although the market was nowhere as hot then as it is now.

I think it's useful to present the other side to give home sellers some perspective and perhaps alleviate some of their anxiety.

And I'm happy to provide the counter-example that we staged and cleaned to the nth degree a fully renovated house, and it didn't result in offers over asking or a quick sale. It was in 2012/13 in a very slow market where only 2 homes in our price range sold in a year.

So cleaning and staging help, but market forces play a very strong role in how fast it sells as well.

Cleaning and staging can only do so much to help an improperly priced offering... no matter what the year.