A Pet-Owner’s Guide to Selling a House

Selling a home with pets can be challenging. Buyers want to envision themselves living in the home, not your family or pets. To appeal to the widest range of buyers, you’ll need to reduce the signs you have a furry family member. Here are our top tips for selling your home when you have pets.

Deep clean and deodorize the house

A good deep clean is an important step whether you have pets or not. You can DIY the cleaning yourself or hire a house cleaning service, especially when it comes to flooring. Your deep clean should include washing linens and soft coverings like bedding, blankets, furniture slipcovers, curtains, replacing air filters, etc. that could hide pet smells. If you choose to handle the deep cleaning and deodorizing yourself, use these guidelines from the Humane Society for safely removing stains and odors in your home.

Remove evidence of pets

You’ll want to remove any evidence that you have pets when you prepare your home for showings. You want people to focus on your home and not become distracted by their personal opinions about pets. Put away toys, bedding, food dishes, and other pet gear before leaving.  If you have a pet in a cage or aquarium you can’t move, make sure everything’s squeaky clean before showings.

Repair any pet damage

Walkthrough your home and closely inspect it for damage caused by pets. You should replace anything that’s been stained, chewed, scratched, or clawed. Potential buyers will look over your home with a keen eye so they’re bound to notice anything that’s out of place.

Spruce up the yard

Yard space is high up on buyers’ wish lists so if you have a backyard, be sure to spend some time reviewing and sprucing it up. Clean up all pet waste, fill in signs of digging, fill patchy areas with new sod, and repair fencing.

Move your pet for viewings

Keeping your pets at home during viewings or open houses is risky. Even the most well-tempered pet can become anxious during the selling process. Multiple viewings can disrupt their routine, along with new people and smells, this can cause some anxiety and stress, especially if you’re not around to calm them down. Not to mention, so buyers may be allergic or have an aversion to pets so you don’t want to disqualify yourself on account of your pets.

It’ll take some coordination but the best thing for everyone is to coordinate accommodations for your pet, whether that be you taking them out for the day, having a family member or friend take them, or dropping them off at a pet daycare. If you’re unable to remove your pet for a showing, leave a note for agents and buyers alerting them to the location of your pet and put them in carriers or cages.

When you’re ready to buy a new home, we hope you’ll consider SummerHill Homes. Residents at Nuevo in Santa Clara have access to two dog parks! We invite you to visit Nuevo and explore everything this vibrant community has to offer. The final 10 homes are now selling so don’t wait!

Visit us at SummerHillHomes.com to learn more about our new homes and communities and schedule a tour today.

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