May 7, 2025 | Selling
Tips For Showing Your House While Living in it
Are you in the process of selling and worried about navigating people coming and going into your home? Then this is the blog post for you. In this post, we will walk through some insider tips and tricks to navigate showings and mediate any stress or worry!
How House Showings Work
Selling your home is an exciting time, from getting your home ready to hit the market to the day when showings begin. Realtors make it 10x easier for you to navigate showings because they set you up on an appointment confirmation form.
Your contact information will be added to this form and then, each time there is a showing, you will be notified either by text or email number when showings for your property are booked. You can also set preferences in terms of when showings are allowed. For example, if you come home from work every night at a particular time, you can set showings to not happen during these hours.
Gearing up to sell your home? Check out these other blogs for more advice!
- Should You Buy or Sell First?
- Is It The Right Time To Sell My Home?
- How to Prep Your Home for the Spring Real Estate Market
House Showing Tips For Sellers
Clean and Declutter
Before your home comes to market you are going to want to envision yourself as the buyer of your home. By doing this, you will have a clear understanding of all the personal items and additional furniture that you should remove in order to clean up the visual appeal of the home.
Removing these items helps the buyers envision themselves in your space and see themselves making it their own.
Some key elements of your home you should focus on cleaning are:
- The windows
- All the doors
- The staircases and the crevices of the seams
- The corners of carpets
- Inside of drawers
- Inside of light fixtures and wall sconces
- In the bathrooms – scrub beside the toilets and showers, baths etc
Cleaning your home entirely can be a lot of work and also very time-consuming. Hiring a professional cleaner/cleaning service is a smart idea if you want to minimize your stress and time constraints!
Our agents at Capstone are happy to provide you with their cleaner recommendations!
Depersonalize Your Home
Here are some common items you should consider removing from your home:
- Family photos
- Personal collections
- Kids artwork
- Anything “taste-specific”
Your realtor will help you determine if items are too personal and should be put away and packed up during the staging process.
Curious about our approach to selling homes? Click here to learn more.
Make a Great First Impression with Curb Appeal
The exterior features of your home are the first thing that the potential buyer sees when they look at your home– first impressions count! In order to bring people inside, they have to like the outside equally!
With spring in full swing, it is important to upkeep your exterior landscaping! Keeping the lawn weed-free and trimmed, tending to flower beds and cleaning up trees and brush from looking overgrown are all great ways to stay on your exterior landscaping!
Staging for Success
Contrary to popular opinion, you do not need to spend a lot to get your home ready to sell! Particularly if you are working with good bones and already have furniture in your home. Staging is all about arranging furniture to fit the room. Elements to consider when staging your home are:
- Use of pillows and blankets
- Keeping the colours minimal and appealing
- Decorative elements and how their size compares to the way they are being styled
- Removing bulky furniture that obstructs view or makes a room appear smaller then the actual square footage
- Playing around with lighting and focusing on elements of softer light vs white lightbulbs
Elements of Decor that Go A Long Way
- A nice painting or piece of art in the living room above the couch
- Lamps in the living spaces and bedrooms
- A table runner in the dining room
- Decorative pieces on the coffee table in the living room
- White towels in all the bathrooms
- Soft lighting in all wall sconces and ceiling lights
- Fresh flowers on the kitchen counter or island
- Succulents and the use of artificial plants to make the home inviting and fresh!
- Throw blankets on the end of beds and the living room furniture
Create a Pre Showing Checklist
If you are a Type A Personality, doing this will help zen you out. Create a simple checklist of some of the things you should consider before showing a home! This could include:
- Make the beds
- Put away dishes
- Fold and put away laundry
- Open blinds to let the light into the home
- Light a candle until you leave to create a welcoming scent
- Give the bathroom a quick wipe-down
- Give the kitchen sink a quick rinse and wipe down
- Check to make sure the oven and cook-top are clean
- Turn on all lamps
- Fluff the pillows
- Make sure all chairs are tucked in and centred
- Make sure all garbage is taken out
Having a simple list that takes anywhere from 15-20 minutes to work through ensures that your home is always looking its best (even for last-minute showing times!)
Secure Valuables and Sensitive Information!
Before you have a house viewing, make sure that you remove all sensitive documentation or valuables from surfaces across the home. Many people choose to lock up their valuables or ensure that they are monitored. This is especially true if you are a collector of something (sports memorabilia, records, concert memorabilia, etc). It is always better to be cautious and ensure that everything goes over smoothly.
Create a Welcoming Atmosphere
Before you leave your home consider: putting on some soft background music either on the TV or on a home speaker system, plugging in a wall plug or lighting a candle (until you leave) and making sure that the home feature sheets or magazines are set out on the kitchen counter or somewhere they will catch the attention of visitors.
We hope that this guide will help assist you in the process of showing your home! It is important to take these steps to get your home looking and feeling its best for your prospective buyers! When in doubt, hiring a professional is the best way to prepare to sell your home!
We would love to connect with you and chat about how your home’s value can be increased through small, budget-friendly changes! Reach us by email at info@capstonereps.com or call 519.824.9050.
Ready to Get Started?
Thinking about buying or selling a home in Guelph or Wellington County? Start the conversation with our team today.
