Real-estate pros Drew and Jonathan Scott (Property Brothers: Forever Home) are multifaceted entrepreneurs and home transformation television and lifestyle personalities with over 18 million monthly TV viewers. They are the co-founders of Scott Brothers Global, a leading lifestyle and entertainment company producing content (Scott Brothers Entertainment) and consumer products (Scott Living, Drew & Jonathan Home) for the masses. The Scott brothers are also New York Times best-selling authors and the founders of Drew + Jonathan Reveal Magazine, a quarterly lifestyle magazine published by Meredith Corporation. Drew and Jonathan’s shows are watched in over 160 countries. The brothers are changemakers and philanthropists advocating for affordable housing and sustainable living. In 2017, they were named Habitat Humanitarians for their work with Habitat for Humanity and in 2020, they produced their first-ever documentary, Jonathan Scott’s Power Trip, which explores why clean, renewable energy isn’t available to all. For more information, visit www.thescottbrothers.comor follow them @MrDrewScott and @JonathanScott.
Fall is one of the hottest seasons in the real estate market, but preparing to buy or sell a home for the first time can be tricky. Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott are using their years of real estate experience to share their best advice for making the process of putting your home on the market as smooth as possible.
Is this the right time to be selling your home?
With COVID-19, a lot of people anticipated there would be a slowdown in the market. But that was actually very short-lived, and we’re now seeing just incredible interest in the market with low inventory, which drives more offers and makes it a seller’s market.
What is the number one tip for people looking to sell their property?
We encourage people to buy, move, then sell. That can sound scary, but doesn’t this sound scarier: having strangers walk through your home and judge all of your stuff, go into your drawers and who knows what else? Having to clean up every single time there’s a showing (and in this market, there tend to be a lot of showings)? Having to take the dogs out and put them with the neighbour? Having to get the day off work to watch the kids?
Instead, you can make it such an easy process where you can get into the new house, move out of the old one, stage it properly, and fix all those maintenance issues so that you can actually sell it for more than it would cost to fix those things.
What should homeowners make sure to do before putting their house on the market?
We really believe in home staging, especially fixing any maintenance issues in the home properly before putting your home on the market. We’ve toured through houses before and have seen that even just some simple cleaning would have gotten them $5,000 more.
We know that a lot of buyers are savvy; they watch shows like ours and know to look out for certain things during a showing. You could paint and fix cabinets that are loose or hanging off, fix up leaking faucets. If there’s some damage to a floor, fix up the flooring. All those little things can start to add up in the buyer’s mind. The more negatives that a buyer sees when walking through, even if they’re small, it all adds up to giving the buyer a feel that this isn’t the right property for them. You want people to be able to picture themselves in the space. So that giant nude self-portrait that you painted, those are things that you want to tuck away when you’re doing showings so that people can really appreciate the home.
What should prospective buyers do when they’re getting ready to shop the market?
Create a list of what you would love to have in your dream home and then go through that list and decide what are your must-haves and what you can live without. Try to find a home that you can grow into. If you plan to continue to grow the family, maybe it’s worth getting that little extra bit of home now. It’ll put you in a better financial situation in the future.
