A Quick Tip for Selling Your Home in the Winter

December 3, 2007 |

Winter is fast approaching here in Virginia. Today, it was not only cold, but raining. When I arrived at one of our new construction homes for an open house, I was reminded of a tip that will help you sell your home in during the winter if it happens to be vacant– turn on the heat.

This sounds like a trivial thing, but it really isn’t. Many owners forget about this during the winter, especially if the home is vacant. It is important to keep the heat on for at least two reasons:

1) You don’t want people to think that your HVAC is broken. Sometimes, people will enter a vacant home without any heat and assume that the heat must be broken. You certainly don’t want people to walk away with that mistaken impression.

2) You want people to be comfortable in your home. In order for people to have a favorable impression of your home, it is imperative that they actually spend time in your home. If it is cold inside the house, the only thing on their mind is going to be getting back in the car to warm up. When it is too cold inside the house, prospective buyers will tend to rush through the showing, or not even bother to view the house at all. That would most certainly not be good.

I’m not saying that you have to keep your heat on 72 degrees the whole time, but putting on at least 55 degrees should make it at least comfortable enough for people not to spend the entire time shivering and searching for the nearest heat source. Besides, having the heat on is just a good preventative measure to keep your plumbing from freezing up and costing you thousands of dollars in repair.

So remember, if you are going to be selling your house in the winter, and it is going to be vacant, take the time to turn up the heat.

[tags] real estate, realtor, charlottesville, virginia, selling, home maintenance, winterization [/tags]

Posted by Daniel Rothamel | Filed Under Home Repair/Improvement, Selling, Video Posts 

Comments

One Response to “A Quick Tip for Selling Your Home in the Winter”

  1. Kristal Kraft on December 3rd, 2007 4:17 am

    Good tips for homeowners! I don’t know if you have this problem in Virginia, but in Denver I was walking on icy sidewalks to show homes. We treaded carefully, because no one wanted to fall, it was worrisome and uncomfortable for me and my clients. A few hand fulls of salt would have eliminated our fears and made the showing more enjoyable.

    [Reply]

Got something to say?





Creative Commons License