Real Estate News & Market Insights:
- Enhance curb and interior appeal with fresh paint, deep cleaning, and strategic staging to attract multiple offers.
- Use a top agent who markets beyond the MLS and targets buyers from their database.
- Highlight usable outdoor space and amenities like seating, grill, or TV to extend living areas.
- Promote extra garage and storage space and emphasize nearby walkability and transit options.
- Showcase special features: views, pool, solar panels, bright floors, and any ADU or home office space.
3. Enhance curb and walk-through appeal
A typical Los Angeles buyer wants a home in move-in condition. They like to have beautiful curb appeal and a nice kitchen layout. The more appealing the home is to the eye, the more interested potential buyers will be at showings.
Jones explains that making the appropriate obvious cosmetic repairs and fixes (deep cleaning the house, getting rid of the carpet, replacing faulty windows, applying a fresh coat of paint, etc.) is important, but staging a home can really knock viewers’ socks off and attract multiple offers.
4. Make your home stand out
A good agent will invest in marketing your home, ensuring that the right buyers see it. This means not just listing it on the multiple listing service (MLS), but paying for marketing, as well as combing through their database of buyers who are looking for homes just like yours. This ensures you don’t have to have dozens of open houses or viewings in order to sell your home.
5. Showcase your outdoor space
Since the pandemic, more homebuyers are looking for usable outdoor space. This means extending your living space outdoors can be extremely appealing. More Californians are transforming their outdoor area to include a full furniture set, smoker, and television to watch the Rams or the Lakers play on a beautiful Los Angeles night.
6. Market additional garage and storage space
Three-car garages are surprisingly popular with out-of-towners moving to Los Angeles. People from the East Coast and Midwest are used to having basements and ample closet storage space. So, the extra garage space can provide storage or even just indoor space for guests’ cars.
7. Advertise proximity and walkability
Many Los Angeles buyers value walkability. Thus, you should highlight parks, coffee shops, and local restaurants in the neighborhood.
Proximity to other services can also affect the sale of your home. In your listing, emphasize the nearby airport, transportation systems, and big offices to appeal to frequent travelers and those who commute to work. If you’re in a great LA area school district, emphasize that to entice families.
8. Point out your home’s special features
Having certain features also makes a house more appealing in Los Angeles. Vic Vartan Markarian, a Glendale, California agent with over 30 years of experience, explains that “most buyers look for a good view, and buyers also look for a pool” to take advantage of the gorgeous weather that is part of California’s draw.
On top of these, Vartan says more and more LA buyers are checking if the house has solar panels already installed to help cut down on high California electricity bills.
9. Show LA buyers bright floors and sunlight
Outdated flooring options — tile and laminate — can put buyers off a house, as can a lack of sunshine streaming into it. Flooring will need to be replaced, and sunshine can be added with skylights or even just by removing any greenery that blocks the sun coming through the windows.
10. Promote space for extra lodging or a home office
If your property has an auxiliary dwelling unit (ADU), such as a mother-in-law cottage, emphasize this in your listing. Tell buyers if you have a home office or stage that extra room as an office. If you are selling a home with large square footage, leverage this.
11. Know what not to fix
If you’re looking for a fast sale, it can be helpful to understand what not to fix. An agent who understands the market and the buyers will know what repairs make sense and which ones may be a waste of your time and money.
In addition, a top agent will know how to present a property that may not be the most desirable. For example, flag lots are unappealing to the typical Los Angeles buyer.
Flag lots are properties that have a long, slender strip of land extending from the street to the typically rectangular main part of the lot. These properties are usually squashed in around others, and they often give that impression. An experienced LA agent will know how to make even a flag lot as appealing as possible.
12. Take advantage of market timing
Along with the recommendations above, it can be helpful to know the level of market activity in your area during different times of the year. HomeLight’s Best Time to Sell Calculator uses housing market data for your area to show you the best and worst months to sell your home. See when the best time is to sell a house if you want to make the most money, and which months are best to sell your house fast.
Whatever features your house has or lacks, a good agent can connect you with a buyer in Los Angeles and often make the process fairly fast.
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