Prepare for spring home selling

By Jennifer Underwood, Realtor, ABR, CRS, SRES

September and October are banner months in Northeast Ohio. The weather is still gorgeous, perfect for long walks and leaf-peeping.

Now is also the ideal time to begin getting your home ready to sell in the spring. The more projects you finish in advance, the easier it will be when it comes time to put that sign in your yard.

With the weather still cooperating, I can do a walk-through of your home inside and out and recommend areas that might need sprucing up with paint.

When the climate takes a turn for the worse and we are stuck inside again, together we can come up with a to-do list of other tasks to accomplish, such as shredding old documents and decluttering.

There’s also a juncture known in my industry as the “pre-spring market,” which begins in early to mid-February. Buyers and sellers in this demographic have younger kids in school. They want to close on the home they are buying or selling and be moved by early summer so their children can get settled before the school year starts.

Since there’s nothing more depressing than a home covered in snow, I recommend to my clients that we take exterior photos now, while their property is still in its most picturesque glory.

I recently offered two sold-out seminars called “Downsizing 101” that delved into this complicated process. They are available on YouTube.

Since downsizing can be overwhelming, I chose to specialize in helping people through every step of the process.

Jennifer Herron-Underwood works at the Howard Hanna Real Estate Services offices in Westlake. She sells homes in Lorain, western Cuyahoga and Medina counties. Call her cell at 440-371-2862or visit JenniferHerron.com for more information.