How to Prepare Your Home for the Season

If you're preparing your home for fall and winter, you're probably looking forward to family gatherings and other holiday fun. However, you may run into seasonal challenges if you also plan on selling your home during this busy time. Distracted buyers, home staging issues, and the end of daylight savings time offer prime examples.

Are you preparing your home for fall showings, or do you need to start preparing your home for winter buyers? A basic understanding of seasonal challenges can help you overcome them. Let's examine a few of these hurdles and their potential remedies.

Seasonal Smells to Help Buyers Feel at Home

Most people don't want to run from one open house to the next during the holidays. They'd rather spend that time enjoying the season in their own homes. Between that desire and other seasonal distractions, your list of prospective buyers may look thin this time of year. For this reason, you'll want to ensure the people who view your home feel less inclined to rush through the showing. A crafty appeal to their sense of smell can do that when preparing your home for winter showings.

Home staging is about making the buyer feel at home. When you think about the holidays, you may recall seasonal household smells, from pumpkin spice to peppermint candy canes. Those odors don't just evoke the season; they also summon precious memories of holidays past in your beloved home. When you add those scents to your home, you help buyers envision future happy holidays there.

Baking and holidays naturally go together. Fresh bread, a vanilla candle, and cinnamon essential oils can fill the home with seasonal cooking aromas. Your visitors will feel perfectly at home the instant they enter the house. As a result, they may stay longer and come away with a stronger impression.

Tackling Time Change Challenges

Even after enticing buyers with seasonal scents, you may still face challenges from the seasonal time change. The recent switch from daylight savings time to standard time means the sun will set on your property an hour earlier. You'll therefore have that much less time each day to show your home. Meanwhile, the approach of the Winter Solstice reduces available daylight even more.

Thankfully, some clever strategies can help you sell your home even after daylight savings time has ended. For instance, you can brighten your interior. You might consider a fresh coat of paint in a white or eggshell shade. Light-colored pillows, drapes, curtains, and furniture coverings can enhance the sense of cheer. If the interior still looks dim in the absence of daylight savings time, consider adding extra lighting or using brighter bulbs. Your exterior may also benefit from additional lighting touches, such as an illuminated front walk.

Preparing your home for fall or winter may call for other adaptations too. Buyers feel less willing to look at properties in low light and cool temperatures. You might have to make yourself more available during daylight hours and accept less evening traffic. You can make up some of the difference by showing your home seven days a week.

Hosting Gatherings Without Sabotaging Your Home Staging

Preparing your home for fall and winter readies you for family gatherings and seasonal parties. However, hosting such get-togethers without spoiling your home staging efforts can prove challenging. Fortunately, careful planning can let you have your holiday cake and eat it too.

You don't want to spend hours hanging elaborate holiday decorations to take them down again later for staging reasons. Address your home staging needs before you set up your holiday decorations. Once you've applied that fresh paint, de-cluttered the interior, and made other necessary changes, you can prepare for your holiday events without fear of interruption.

Seasonal decorations can make your home more welcoming. However, you may want to tone it down while showing your home. Dim the outdoor colored lights to make the exterior less flashy, and keep the holiday decor on the sparse or understated side. You want to help prospective buyers imagine living in your home all year round, not just in the fall and winter.