Getting Your Garage Ready for a Sale

When you have a home on the market and start cleaning out the rooms and making everything presentable, one area that often gets overlooked is the garage. In fact, the garage sometimes ends up looking worse as it’s used as a storage spot for items from other areas of the home.

The problem with this centers around the fact that many buyers care about the garage, and if they don’t see a place where they can envision parking their car, setting up a workspace or storing their own stuff, it could put a damper on a possible sale.

After all, a cluttered or messy garage may send the wrong message to a prospective buyer, as it’s next to impossible to visualize what a garage can offer if all buyers see are old boxes, oily floors and junk piled everywhere.

However, a clean garage can subconsciously imply that you take better than average care of your home. It may also give a feeling of newness to a property.

Start by getting rid of everything you don’t need. For years, the garage has probably been the dumping ground for old clothes, unused gym equipment and broken toys and appliances. Either donate things to a local charity, hold a garage sale, sell things on Craigslist, or put it all on the curb for pickup. The idea is to minimize the best you can.

While you don’t have to remove everything, you should organize your belongings. Start by getting a bunch of cartons or crates and storing everything neatly. This means putting all your holiday decorations together, placing your garden tools in one spot and putting all those trash bags full of nicely folded clothes inside a container.

Lighting is vital to a garage, as most tend to be dull and drab. Replace light bulbs in all the fixtures with the highest wattage allowed, and if the only light operates on a pull string, replace it so that it’s not dull. If your garage has windows, keep them clean so the light shines in.

If you really want to go all out, some larger upgrades include adding industrial flooring, painting the walls and ceiling and replacing any parts of the garage door that are rusty and not working properly. Also, if you have an automatic garage opener, check to make sure the batteries work.

While it’s true that no one is probably looking at photos of the garage when they do their initial search for homes they want to visit, once a house hunter comes in and sees your dreamy garage, it could be the final factor in selling your home.