Pittsboro Real Estate Broker Eric Andrews (https://www.ericandrewsrealtor.com/) gives unique and excellent tips on how to sell your house FAST in Chatham County. Hint: It’s much different than selling a house in Cary!
Chatham County Tips
- Landscape and Pick Up Property
- Power Wash your house
- Stain and Paint Your Deck
- New gravel on Driveway
- Add Potted Plants for Staging
- Repair Fencing
- Clean Up Around Your Pond
- Bush Hog the Pasture
- Clean Up Your Garage
Speaker 1: What can people do to prepare their house for sale in Chatham County?
Speaker 2: Chatham County’s a little bit different than the rest of the world. There’s some things.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, everybody has written this article before.
Speaker 2: Right. There’s some things that we’re going to do in Chatham County that are a lot different than what we’re going to do in Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill.
Speaker 1: Put the chickens away.
Speaker 2: I don’t have that down, but I do have, landscaping is a little bit more important. And when we do the cutesy house in Cary and it’s in the subdivision, everybody’s yards looking pretty good. But in Chatham county, when we have two, three, five, maybe even ten acres, we’re not as concerned with the mulch being perfect around the house and the hedges trimmed and everything. Landscaping is one of the easiest, best ways we can go to make a good impression. And, sorry, even though, even though we don’t have any drive-by traffic and we’re not in the middle of a subdivision, and even though we don’t have the best yard sign in our front yard, you still, in order to prepare your house, landscaping’s very important. Power washing’s very important. Part of living out in the country is more bugs, more spiders, more cobwebs, more leaves, more dirt. So we definitely have to power wash. We like our wooden decks and front porches, so painting, staining those real, real important. Do you need to do that now?
Speaker 1: Now, everything you’ve mentioned…
Speaker 2: You have to do?
Speaker 1: Like, I got that tire collection going on.
Speaker 2: Tire collection?
Speaker 1: In my deck, I just replaced some boards on it so they’re all different colors.
Speaker 2: You live on an acreage property in the middle of the country and that’s what we do in Chatham county. So it’s not unusual. Here’s my biggest one. This is one of the best things. We’re talking 450 to $2,000, but I will definitely get you this money back. Gravel the driveway. People do not understand how much of a difference that makes, but think of what you’re… First of all, this is a foreign concept to all the Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill people because they have paved driveways. But the vast majority of us don’t have… we might have a cement pad, but we don’t have paved driveways. So a fresh load of crusher run or three-quarter stone on the gravel driveway. You got weeds and stuff, you can spray it, but okay, you sprayed it, now you got a dead weed driveway. The thing is, we put that new gravel on there. It’s about two, three inches high and it does make a difference. It makes a difference for photos and it makes a difference for drone photography.
Speaker 1: I just burned all of my weeds. So.
Speaker 2: That’s great because they’re not coming back, but it’s not the most photogenic situation. Some potted plants around the house. It’s real easy. I love seasonal stuff right now. We’re getting close to October, November. So we want mums and some pumpkins, seasonal staging. This seems so obvious, but we have more fencing than most people. You can’t have… that one board falling down doesn’t bother you, but it bothers buyers, so we have to mend our fences. Clean up around the pond. You’re very blessed to have a pond. You let everything grow around it. It needs to look like a pond. It needs to look like a golf course. You got to mow all those trees and high weeds around the pond.
One of the biggest things, nobody gets this one, certainly not a concern in Cary, you need to bush hog the pasture. That’s the biggest thing. Nobody gets that. But if you have this beautiful field and the weeds are three and a half, four feet high that’s not helping me for a photos and that’s not helping you for showings. You have to bush hog the pasture. And the last thing is we are a little different in Chatham. No one uses their front door in Chatham County. Now, the rest of the world uses their front door. In neighborhoods, people use the front door. It has been over a year since I used my front door. I have not walked through my front door in a year.
Speaker 1: I walk through my garage.
Speaker 2: That’s what most people in Chatham County do. The rest of the world uses their front door. We don’t do that. So you do have to, your garage needs to fit cars in it. This is a weird concept that we don’t get in Chatham County. And we have to pre-pack our stage inside the house. You’re living in there and it doesn’t bother you that you have 17 pieces of Tupperware that are about to go into the cupboard. They need to go into the cupboard. The countertops need to be cleared off. It needs to look like you have company coming over. It needs to be staged and super clean. Chatham County, we focus a little bit more on the outside than most places will, but we got to take a little bit of a look on the inside as well.
