There are a number of reasons you may consider upsizing your home. Maybe you have several kids and need more space. Or perhaps you can afford to invest in a larger property and are ready to leave your starter home. No matter what the reason, upsizing your home takes preparation. From the first step of selling your current home to buying your new home and finally moving in, you’ll want to properly plan all of your decisions. These are a few ways to prepare to upsize your home:
Prepare Your Home for Market
One of the most difficult choices in real estate is when to list your home for sale during the upsizing process. You don’t want your house to sell before you can move into a new one, but you also don’t want to move into a new house before your current home has sold. While your decision should be based on the current market, you should do the legwork of preparing your home before you actually list it.
There’s many things you can do to spruce up your home that will hopefully help it sell faster and for a higher price. Increase your curb appeal by making improvements to your landscaping and repairing any noticeable damage on the exterior of your home. You can also stage the interior of your home by cleaning and organizing your living space, as well as removing personal items and repainting walls to neutral colors.
Decide Where You Need Space
Upsizing your home doesn’t always mean that you’re just looking for more square footage. Space can be found in many different ways when looking for a new home. So before you begin searching for houses for sale, start by making a checklist of things to look for based on how your current home is not satisfying your needs.
Do you need more bedrooms and bathrooms? Or do you need the same amount of beds and baths with just more square footage? Upsizing could also mean more storage space, a wider garage, or a larger basement. It could even mean moving to a similar sized house on a larger plot of land. It’s important to decide what upsizing truly means to you. Once you’ve done that, you can then start to browse homes for sale with a tool that allows you to filter by price, beds, baths, square footage and lot size.
Establish a Moving Plan
Moving to a new home can be a stressful process, but not one that can’t be mitigated through proper planning. From packing to shipping all of your boxes and furniture, you’ll want to have a clear idea of where everything should go. You should also make a list of items that you don’t plan to bring with you and determine how you will remove or sell them. Once you’re actually ready to start shipping items, you can enlist the help of a moving service that can take the work off your hands and ensure that your goods arrive unharmed.
Furthermore, because you’re upsizing your home and will have additional space, you’ll want to pack accordingly. With new rooms and spaces, try to pack based on your new home’s layout. Rather than labeling all of your boxes with their location within your current home, determine ahead of time where you’d like everything to go in your new home. This way, once you get everything unpacked, you won’t need to reshuffle everything.
Upsizing your home can be an exciting but stressful time. Adjusting to a different-sized home requires planning to make sure that you’re getting everything that you’re looking for. Through smart decision-making and proper preparation, you can set yourself up for success in the home buying process.
