If you want to make your home ready to sell, then it needs to be cleaned up and fixed up as best as you can manage with the time and budget you have available to you. For many houses, this is a lot for work and can take weeks or even months. Many homeowners don’t realize all of the work that goes into preparing a home for sale. But how do you make a hoarder house sellable?
4 Steps to Make a Hoarder House Sellable
How do you take a home that has been used for hoarding and turn it into a property that is ready for the real estate market? It will take a lot of effort, and we have some tips that will help with this process.
1. Find a Cleanup Crew
You cannot really assess what kind of work needs to be done and what repairs will need to take place until you have the mess cleaned up. The work of converting a hoarder house to a real estate-ready house begins by removing the trash. You will probably need some help for this part of the work, whether it is your house you are preparing or someone else’s.
Get together as many people as you can to help or even hire a junk removal company. Be prepared to haul away truckloads of material to the trash. Make sure you know what is to be considered trash and what is worth saving before you start. You don’t want the process to be slowed down at all. The people who are cleaning up need to be able to make quick decisions as to what stays and what goes.
If there are a lot of items to keep, then they can be hauled away to a storage facility. Hoarders will have problems getting rid of some things. All of those items that clog up the hallways and rooms will need to be removed. You don’t want to attempt to sell a house when it is still packed with hoarded items.
Before calling a cleanup crew or some friends to help out, take a visit to the home and assess the situation. You can then make notes of what needs to be done and try to figure out how many people you will need to get the work done in a reasonable amount of time.
2. Bring a Truck (or Two)
You also need a way to remove items to a storage shed or to the dump. Have a truck prepared for that and make sure you have someone to drive it and unload it at the dump site. If you can have more trucks available with more drivers and unloaders, then go for it. Just make sure there are enough people to unpack the house and load the truck for that arrangement to make sense.
4. Have the Home Carefully Cleaned
The next logical step once all of the trash and unnecessary items are out is to clean the place. You should have it professionally cleaned using hoarding cleaning in Las Vegas, NV, or you can clean it on your own. Either way, you should give enough time for the cleaning to take place, and you should go for a deep cleaning rather than a light one.
This is one of the key steps, and it needs to be taken seriously. Hoarding can be damaging to the house, creating all sorts of hazards and sanitization problems that have to be dealt with. Be prepared for a long and involved cleaning process that may take several days, especially if you are not using a professional cleaning company.
Do not take any shortcuts with the cleaning and be prepared to do several passes on some areas of the home, especially the carpets that may have been soiled by hoarding habits.
When cleaning, consider what items can be saved and what needs to be tossed out. Some furniture, carpet, bedding, and other items may not be in good enough condition to keep around. Consider just tossing them rather than trying to save things that have been damaged too much.
4. Inspect for Damage
You will also need to look over the house and find any parts of the home that have been damaged. Hoarding habits do a good job of hiding problems for a long time. There could be water leaks, mold, and electrical problems that might not be known because they were covered up by all the stuff in the house. These will all need to be addressed.
If any of the problems are over your head or you are not sure if you can adequately assess the extent of the damage, then you should call in a professional. Have an inspector look over the house or call in an electrician, plumber, or other expert as needed. That way, the issues can be properly assessed and then repaired. If you want the hoarder home to sell, then any problems with the electrical and plumbing systems will need to be handled completely. If there is mold or a problem with the roof, those issues will need to be taken care of as well.
Some of these kinds of issues can be dealbreakers for buyers. They may not want to do any fixing up when they buy a home, so they will look elsewhere if everything is not looking good and in working order for them when they check out the house.
Closing Thoughts
What needs to be done to make a hoarder house sellable will differ from one property to another. Each home will have unique challenges, but there are some issues you can expect a hoarding house to have. There will be trash to take care of, lots of items that need to be moved, extensive cleaning that will need to take place, and some damage that will need to be repaired.
Once you take care of these issues, then the house can become ready to sell. Even a hoarding house can be presentable when enough work and effort is put into it.
