With increasing interest rates, the housing market has turned buyer’s market now. Higher interest cost means that there are more sellers than buyers looking for their next transaction. So it is far more important to take extra care while selling the house than a couple of years ago.

Here are some important steps you should take while preparing your house to market to buyers. They should help you sell the house fast. You can even sell and rent back, if you have a buyer but no where to go yet.

1. It is vital that you start to view your house as a product that needs marketing rather your home. Experience tells us that this will be difficult in the beginning because you may have been in this house for many years and have memories attached to it. This may take a few weeks to get into that thinking mode, so start early. This is a vital step in your overall strategy to achieve the best possible selling price in the shortest amount of time.

2. Get your house inspected by a professional surveyor. This only needs to be of preliminary nature and not thorough. You just want to ensure that there aren’t any unpleasant surprises for the later part of selling process, and prepare if there are any. This step is important because buyers will have an upper hand in negotiation if such things are discovered by their own survey of the house, they may even pull out of the deal completely. Surveyor’s signed document will demonstrate the care you have taken of your house, instilling confidence among the estate agents or Realtor as well as the buyer.

3. It is important to prepare your house. You need to be objective here – stand back and see it from the point of neutrality. Would you buy this house You have lived here for some time, so you may be forgiven for being partial. Invite your friends around, get your neighbors’ opinion. Ask your estate agent for suggestions on what you can do to make the house more sell able. Go around other properties in your area that are being sold pretending as a buyer and make notes of their strong points. It is best to check out your competitors at this stage. Any enhancement of your house at this house does not need to be expensive.

4. You will need to make some effort to ensure that your house stands out over similar other properties in your area. To start with, it will need to be cleaner, fresher and give the appearance of being well maintained. Walls should have neutral colored paint or wallpapers, carpets and upholstery deep cleaned and garden tidy. Since you are preparing this house for others to live in, make sure that the house is appealing to the vast majority of population. Go with neutral decor over your own personal tastes.

5. Not every one is a DIY enthusiast. Make sure that all incomplete projects are complete and loose ends are tidies up. A vast majority of people prefer moving into a house that will require no or little maintenance for the next 2 or 3 years. So sort out those wires hanging from the ceilings and clear up the garage.

6. Consider depersonalization of your house. You should have only a few displayed family pictures because if wherever you look you see your family’s memorabilia then buyers find it hard to visualize themselves living there. People display all sorts of things like trophies, granny’s needlework or baseball bats etc – they should all be in moderation.

Above steps will help you to make your house a lot ore marketable than others. Good luck.