Declutter To Sell: Why Less Sells For More (Part 1)

Mary Anne Ivison  00:01

The declutter queen with Avery Cundill,

Avery Cundill  00:06

today, we are going to start with what might be considered the foundation of our lives, our homes. I'm going to try to answer the question of why decluttering matters so much when selling your home, maybe even when thinking about selling your home. I have recently gone through this myself, and I can tell you firsthand, this can be both a challenging and difficult declutter that takes not hours, not days, but weeks. So give yourself a break and a lot of time for this one. Maybe you're thinking that selling a home is all about location, choosing paint colors, looking at square footage, and yes, all of these things matter, but clutter, clutter could be the silent deal breaker. Let's talk about why less truly sells for more, and what clutter can do to your buyer's brain, the psychology of space. When we think about buyers coming to look at our homes for sale, we need to remember that buyers are not buying our stuff. They are, in fact, buying the idea of living in our space. Keeping this in mind, it's important to know that our clutter not only distracts and shrinks space, but it also makes the home feel like yours and not theirs. When we create a clean and minimal space for the buyer to look at. This allows the buyers to imagine their furniture, their routines and their life in the home, and ultimately, this is what can create more interest in your home. So we think, Oh, I'm going to put out my favorite pictures and bowls. Well, guess what? They're not your buyer's favorites. So try to think of cleaning space and clearing space. So maybe you're thinking what is considered clutter when selling here's some examples, personal photos, piles of paper, even books, overstuffed shelves, crowded countertops, even furniture can be clutter, if it blocks flow or makes rooms feel small. Our goal needs to be to help our home for sale be neutral, clean and spacious, not sterile, but intentional. You want potential buyers to be able to imagine themselves in their space, not feel like they are intruding on someone else's territory. Although decluttering our homes is good for so many reasons. Let's talk about the return on investment. First off, studies show that decluttered homes sell faster and for three to 5% more on average. Another benefit is that you'll also be ahead of the game. When it's time to pack, you've already started the process, and we're going to get to this stage where you sold your home, decluttered it, but now when you're ready to pack, guess what? There's even more to do. So why don't you start the process before you even list to sell? You so let's consider you've made the decision to list your home and you're ready to try and attack this declutter the challenge this week. Choose one space, just one maybe it's your entryway, maybe it's your living room. Start to remove visual clutter, maybe even take before and after photos, because that can be motivating. And once you have done just one little space,

Avery Cundill  04:39

move to another and so on and so forth. Try to take your time with this. It's challenging and time consuming, I know, but you're going to reap the benefits of this decluttering, I promise you that. And don't worry in the next upcoming pod. Casts. I will also deal with decluttering your home for sale in a different way, and we're going to dive deeper into a room by room strategy that really culls and clears. But for now, think of this as a challenge just one space. And if a room is too daunting for you, do a table. Do your entryway, something very small. As we journey into this decluttering our homes for sale, there's lots more to do, but starting is the first step,

Mary Anne Ivison  05:40

and now tea with the declutter queen.

Avery Cundill  05:49

I like to introduce Ty

05:51

Mitchell, thanks for having me on.

Avery Cundill  05:53

Ty is a licensed Realtor based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and after spending 15 years entertaining audiences on morning radio. Ty transferred his ability to connect with an audience, and has built a residential real estate business where he now helped around 100 families in Winnipeg, he was recently named the number one small team Canada wide in units sold for his brokerage. Congratulations to the Queen is clapping and from new builds to longtime family homes, Ty has agreed to come on the declutter queen to share some anecdotes about his life in real estate and how a little bit of decluttering goes a long way. So thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show Ty and I was hoping to get some tips for the audience today about if you're selling your home, or even thinking of selling your home, what are some decluttering tips that you can give that would attract a better audience or maybe even a bigger, bigger showings to come out to the house?

Ty Mitchell  06:56

Yeah, it's all about presentation, right? So we want to make sure that we are putting our best foot forward, as you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. So whether it's through the photos, we want to make sure that on picture day, everything is looking like it's right out of a magazine, if we can. And then, of course, that attracts people to the home. And then when they come to the home, that initial first step into the home is so, so important, if there's boxes everywhere, if there's bad smells, if there's a bunch of clutter, you can bet that it's going to turn some people off, because when people are entering into a home that they're potentially going to purchase, they want to see their lives in that home. They want to visualize their furniture, their things, their pictures of their family on the wall. They don't want to get cooped up, spending 1015, minutes trying to figure out the layout of the house, because there are so many things, and that's really the best way to describe it, just things in your home. The least amount of stuff, the better it's going to be for you. I run into this all the time. I was actually just showing a house yesterday, and we went through and the question came up from my client. He said, is anybody living here? And I said, Well, they probably are, but they've done a really good job of decluttering and taking everything out of the home. And then when we went to look out at the double garage detached in the back, we went out and I saw all of the things that were in their house. And I said to my client, I said all of this stuff that you see piled up to the rafters in the garage was in their home. So whoever their agent was did a good job of preparing them to really just have the home showing its absolute best. So some tips for you. As far as decluttering goes, depersonalize. We want to take out any major personal effects. Firstly, if there's any valuables, you know, anything that you wouldn't want somebody to see, if you have some family photos, some art pieces that you wouldn't want somebody to potentially touch. Now, generally, buyers are respectful enough, and their agents are coaching them to not be touching people's personal effects. However, people have kids, you know, if you've got a bunch of rings laying out, could invite something that you don't want, potentially at an open house or just even someone coming through the home. So you want to make sure that all your personal effects are put aside, valuables locked up in a safe, and that as far as the decluttering aspect, less is more, the least amount of stuff in this space, the better big, bulky pieces of furniture that take up entire rooms. See if we can take that out of the home and maybe put in some staging pieces. Again, every home is going to be different, and this is why we offer, you know, a consulting process when we come in to advise somebody on what it's going to take to sell their home. But taking out unnecessary things is going to be the number one piece that I would offer. As far as advice goes.

Avery Cundill  09:46

It's interesting, because with the content of the podcast, I talk about some of these things that you were saying, and we didn't even collaborate, so I'm on the right track. Somebody comes in and says, Oh, but this wooden bird. Bird that I bought in 1983 this is amazing. Everybody will want to see this. What can you say to somebody who really thinks that their stuff is so amazing and will help with the sale? And you walk in and you go, this wooden bird looks like a nightmare, and I wish they could get rid of it. How do you balance that as an agent without offending, but with, you know, getting rid of the wooden bird.

Ty Mitchell  10:25

Like not to be disrespectful to anyone's stuff and their collection, I understand when I go in and sit down with somebody for the first time, especially if it's a longtime homeowner, and they have built up a life's worth of memories. I'm not in here to take away your memories. What I'm here to do is set the stage for you to receive top dollar for your home. And in my experience of selling hundreds and hundreds of homes, many of which on the listing side, I can assure you that nobody is coming in to purchase this home because of the bird or the furniture within the home. They want to be able to see the walls, they want to be able to see the baseboard. They want to be able to see the trim, to see if there's been any moisture penetration over the years. Really, they want to find out that they're building or buying a good building, right? The structure is so important that sometimes all of these nuanced pieces get in the way of that. I've sold properties for people who have had a an illustrious athletic career, at which point I said, While I appreciate your hanging jerseys and football helmets all over the place, what it's going to do is create a distraction when somebody comes into the home because they remember you playing for that football team, and they're going to spend five minutes thinking about all of these, you know, memories of yours, and they're not going to be building the storyline in their head of their own stuff being in this home, so it can actually act as a distraction. And again, we can take down those family photos for the photos and video and the content that we're going to put up online for MLS. We can take them down for a couple of weeks, and then as soon as the showings are done, especially in a market that I'm in, if we're priced competitively and we're well priced, entering the market. This home isn't going to sit for months and months and months. You're going to be one or two weeks without that particular wooden bird sitting on your shelf. So again, we want to take away as much furniture as we can, and this is where offering up solutions for people, right? So it's not like, okay, we're just going to take the bird down. Well, what are we going to do with the bird? What are we going to do with all of these other these other items that are in the home? So, you know, there are moving in storage companies that will come in and do a pack for you and load everything up and put it in one of their storage units. There's a company called pods that I just referred somebody to the other day, where they show up with an eight by eight shipping container. You come and put all your stuff in, and then they take it all the way to your next destination, wherever that is, whether it's an inter city move, or you're moving out of province like yourself. And so there's all these solutions that we can come up with for people, and it's about showing empathy. Obviously, when we go to the home, it's not like we're just walking and be like, Oh, your furniture is awful. There is a way to go about doing it without coming off as rude, but really it's just a professional advice. And you know, if I was to show somebody photos of a home that is decluttered and professionally staged, or at least professionally cleaned and tidied up, versus one that is full of stuff and personal content, I can almost 100% guarantee that the home that's been decluttered and has been well prepared for showings is going to yield a higher sale price. And when I speak to a serum Adam seller, I say exactly that. I said, if the goal is to receive the highest amount possible for your home, we have to show its absolute best. We don't want people getting lost in the shuffle of all of your moving boxes, for example, right? That creates stress for people, because nobody really likes moving at the end of the day, even if you have a good game plan. But if you've been in a home for a long time, we as humans, we just gather, gather, gather, gather, gather. Nobody purges, even if they think they're purging one little bag going off to the Salvation Army or Value Village probably isn't going to cut it. As soon as you think you've decluttered, go back through and do another round of decluttering.

Avery Cundill  14:07

I call that the second declutter tie. Always has to happen. And you know what I hear you saying is, is that when you sort of connect the dollars to a little bit of work, people you know, gravitate towards that a little more like, Well, why should I put this stuff in storage? Why should I bother? Well, the bother is, you're going to get more bang for your buck, so a little bit of work goes a long way. What from what I hear you're saying when it comes to a sale, and what I'd also suggest is it sounds like, look, when you're finally sold and you're moving on. Are you really going to take all this stuff? So why don't you just do the declutter now? Do you need seven spatulas? Do you need a drawer full of, you know, napkins that you haven't used in 20 years? Why don't you just go through it all now and then? You don't have to do it later, when you're actually packing and moving?

Ty Mitchell  14:59

Yeah, I was interested. Introduced to a lovely lady. Absolutely love this woman. She was so cool, very interesting life that she had built for herself. Now, the house was about 1800 square feet, and she had an extensive art collection in this home in addition to everything else. So you can imagine lots of Inuit art. So sculptures, all kinds of just pieces, stereo equipment, records, stuff that I found incredibly cool, and she was very, very attached to, in fact, she was a little, I'll call it, embarrassed to even, you know, have people in her home, because there was just so much stuff in there. So again, we connected some dots for her, somebody from one of the art galleries. In fact, two local art galleries came into the home, gave her an assessment, and ended up buying lots of the artwork off of her, which helped her go into her next stage as well. And it was a matter of involving her family members in it. There was one of her brothers and a niece that was over, and we had the honest conversation with her. It's like as much as you love all of this stuff, the reality is, you're going into a condo that's going to be 1100 square feet, and you're not going to be able to take it all right? So she had this incredible collection and just a wonderful life. However, to get people into the home, the commentary was, we can't see anything in this home, and it maybe hurt her feelings a little bit that this home had been so loved by her and her partner for a very, very long time, but, you know, ultimately it just became too much for her to handle. And so that's where offering the solution of there's a company that comes in, the seniors moving company that I deal with in Winnipeg here, Lisa, and she's just wonderful. Makes people feel great. And they have an entire system set up where they will come in and give it, like a red, green, yellow, like a stoplight setup, where it's like, okay, this absolutely, I can't get rid of this is, like, you know, sentimental, heirloom, super valuable. Then there's, like, the yellow. It's like, okay, well, you know, if I could put this up on Kijiji or marketplace and get a few 100 bucks for it, I would sell it. And there's the you know, this must go. You're never going to use this stuff ever again and again. It's not a quick process. That one in particular took us the better part of five weeks to prepare the home. But in the end, it ended up paying off. And we did one day of showings. I had five groups through, and we ended up with two offers. And she got her price that as she told me, she said, if I can get x for this house, I'll throw my cane up in the air and I'll go dancing out on the streets doing cartwheels. So we were able to do that for her. I still have yet to see the cartwheels. But, you know, again, this is like, these are people's lives, and we understand that we all need to live. I have another one right now a listing where it's going, it's gone past the offer date, so we're still on market. It's been about two weeks on market, and they've been staying with with in laws, with her parents, and so they want to move back into their home, but they know as soon as they go back into the home with their young kid and their dog, it's almost like unmanageable to think that they would just be able to exit quickly for a showing if something came up. It's like, it's that tricky. It's it's like we want to keep them out of the home as long as possible. And this is the conversation that we have every couple days. It's like we're getting closer we've got showings. And you know, they agree that they say, like, hey, once we go back into this home, it's going to be very hard to just things. It's winter here still. We have jackets, we have boots. There's muck that comes in off the bottom of your boots. It's like all these little things that you have to think about when you're getting ready to

Avery Cundill  18:31

sell a home absolutely and so, would you say there's a nice balance between having like, you know, exactly like nothing in the house, and it makes people go, what's wrong? Where's everybody? Because they want to know that it's a house that was used and lived in and loved, versus everything's bursting, kind of a middle ground. Leave your night some stuff, but not all of your stuff. You know, is there a balance there?

Ty Mitchell  18:53

Yeah, it's like one dresser, not three dressers in the bedroom. It's not the biggest Hutch that you can have, you know, for a china cabinet or something like, again, not many homes have these type of things unless you're dealing with somebody that's, you know, been living in the home for a long time, like most, most people of a younger generation don't have, you know, more than one set of IKEA dishes I find. So again, depending on who you're dealing with, that's the level of de scaling that we need to do. But yes, a vacant home with nothing in it, especially if it's a flip house, a renovation house. You see lots of these where they're just completely empty. Now, one solution that I use with sellers. Now, instead of spending the, you know, anywhere from 1500 to three to 4000 to stage a home, we're just using Virtual Staging, so using that, that AI capability of filling a room with furniture, so that, at least in the photos, it appears that somebody could visualize a kitchen table, you know, a couch and a TV on the wall, and you know, where, what the what the room layout would look like. So we do use. Um, some of those methods as well, but I find overall, having just a limited amount of furniture, even if it's just a throw rug, a coffee table and a three seater couch in a living room, what it does is just helps people see the space. Because if I tell you that this living room is 13 feet six inches wide, that doesn't mean much, but if you think of it in a three seater couch being nine feet long. Now you're like, Okay, well, there's not much room in this living room if I bring in my full couch with the L shape ottoman, right? So that's where that staging really does, does help out a lot. But like I say, it's like one night stand on each side. It's not like the full Hutch beside the bed. You don't need like the five chested dresser. You want to take those bigger items, bulky items, out if you have to maneuver your body around a piece of furniture in a living space, it's probably too big for the living space. And you know, I think

Avery Cundill  20:53

that you're probably a second set of eyes for a lot of people, because they don't see it. Sometimes, when you're living in a certain way, you don't see it, and then somebody makes an observation, and the light goes on, and they go, Oh, absolutely. So I imagine your job as a little bit of as a realtor is also a little bit of a second set of eyes for these people, you know, for your for your clients to say, you know, here's an idea. And then you sit with it, and maybe you resist it at first, but then you're like, I think he had a point. And then you kind of move along for the, you know, for the show or for the ride,

21:26

so to speak, yeah. And I feel like, when people

Ty Mitchell  21:29

are hiring me, you're hiring me for the professional advice, right? You're not necessarily hiring me. So I tell you everything you want to hear. Obviously, there is, there's a fine balance here. We're not just going to walk in and immediately, you know, carve up the way that somebody's been living. It's, it's not that dramatic, but it's certainly yes. The second set of eyes and the professional advice, I see this all the time. I also tell people, out of 100 plus families that I'm going to work with this year, you know, 40 to 50 of those are going to be buyers. And here's the feedback that I get when I work with those buyers going into the home. So it's how you frame everything when you're going into the conversation with people. So it's everything from the condition of the home, you know, things that need to be touched up. I know when we were preparing your home for sale, it was the same thing. We walk through the home, we say, okay, you know, for a few $100 or a few $1,000 we could do these few things that are just going to come up as feedback anyway. And we can get in front of that before, you know, before the feedback comes from the open market, as I've said, you get that one opportunity and and if the first week you're the buyers that come through the home, your home's not showing its best, you don't really get a chance to get those buyers back through the home. So you might as well just take a little bit of extra time at the beginning. And if it is about hiring a painter, hiring somebody to come in and fix that, you know, furnace that's been making a weird clicking noise, or fixing the element on the stove, you know, if there's just these little nuanced things that need to be fixed or replaced, repaired at a home, certainly encourage people to do it, if it's within the budget. Also coming up with solutions for people. I'm helping somebody right now. They're in a bit of a jam financially, and they can't afford to just pay somebody out of pocket for it. So again, I'm able to absorb that cost at the beginning, knowing that because of us doing these extra things, like paying for the staging, like paying for the patching and painting ahead of time, I know that that home is going to sell for a higher dollar amount, and thus they're going to be able to pay me back for that 2500 bucks, or whatever my initial investment is into it as well. So giving you professional advice and also being able to just genuinely help wanting you to be able to go on to the next step, and I find that if I do a good job of being open, honest, transparent, that gets passed along from that particular client to their friends in their circles. Oh, hey, that Thai guy. Oh, he just came in. He told me all the things that we needed to do here. Because sometimes you're right. People generally just don't know, or don't realize that they're living in a totally cluttered house. They're like, well, it's worked for me for so long. Why can't everyone else see it this way, absolutely.

Avery Cundill  24:02

And you actually gave me a really nice segue, because I was just going to say how much you helped me. And I consider myself a good Declutter. But there were some things, you know, you can't see, and I remember you we having conversations, and I was like, Oh, absolutely. And you were just so much help for me and my family. So I thank you for your personalized touch on that. And I think that showing people the way towards how decluttered, decluttering your home in so many aspects, can help with that sale price and with your eventual move, and with when you buy a home that you're not taking a lot of stuff that maybe you don't need. So there's some emotion here, and we're not getting into a whole psychological deep dive, but it's a little bit of showing people what you need. And I like that. I think you mentioned somebody who helps people to really see what they need. What is a must go, what they must take. That sort of my system as well, is, what do you really need? What can you get rid? Of and what do you really want to keep and there is distinctions there, and they're going to have to happen sooner or later. So you know, it's good to good time to do it, when you're moving and you're making a shift in your life. Why not do it now?

Ty Mitchell  25:14

Yeah, and the more organized you are on the outbound, the easier it's going to be on the inbound when you go to your next place as well. If everything's properly labeled in the boxes, it's tagged. You know, you're not just throwing everything in a bag and then, because then when you get to the other side, then you're going to have that stress of, Oh, what did I do with the utensils? Oh, you know, just have everything as labeled and as organized as possible. And, yeah, make it as happy of a move as possible. You touched on it off the top in radio for 15 years. My wife and I, we moved. I want to say it was 11 times and sometimes within the market to, you know, a bigger home as our family grew. And so we moved a lot. Now, I can't take credit for any of the moving, the behind the scenes. My wife was incredible at, you know, prepping everything so that we were just ready to go. The one thing that we learned very quickly is that movers charge by the pound, so you have to decide if that $29 IKEA lack coffee table is worth it, or if you can just buy one on the other end for cheaper, and in a lot of cases, if you can unload a lot of stuff on Facebook marketplace, still get a decent buck for it, and then just start fresh Absolutely.

Avery Cundill  26:30

I'll tell you just one funny thing, and I did a lot of that before we moved, and we were unpacking here in our home in Quebec, and I literally had. I didn't see everything in my house, but they wrapped up a rock that my son had collected somewhere down and I missed it, so I paid to have a rock moved from Manitoba to Quebec. So look, it pays to go through your stuff. I thought I had done it and do it once. Do it twice, because you don't need to pay for a rock. And also, somebody who moves a lot, this is second hat. You realize, what am I using? Am I gonna Why am I taking it with me? Is it cheaper to buy something new on the other side? So that's really good advice as well. Yeah. Ty I thank you so much for coming on the show. If you live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and are thinking of selling or listing your house, Ty Mitchell. Ty, how did he get in touch with you? Yeah, easy enough.

Ty Mitchell  27:29

You can go through my website at Ty sells, wpg.com if you just type in Ty Mitchell, Winnipeg real estate, it'll pop right up hundreds of Google reviews of the five star variety people that just share paragraphs about their positive experiences working with myself and my team, I love to help people. I love Winnipeg and yeah, I love to provide some open, honest, transparent advice throughout the entire process, from start to finish. So I can help you on the buying side as well. But I love listing up homes and making them show their

Avery Cundill  28:00

best, and I can vouch for you. You were wonderful with us. So I again, thank you. I think we've thanked you many times. We might have you back. We'll see where the show meanders. Thanks again.

Ty Mitchell  28:14

Ty always here for you. Thank you very much. The declutter queen. Love the podcast, and we'll talk to you soon.

Mary Anne Ivison  28:21

Thanks for listening to the declutter queen with Avery Cundill for more decluttering tips and tricks, go to the declutter queen.ca produced and distributed by the sound off media company you.