Congratulations! You’ve decided to sell your home and you’re ready to catch the attention of its next proud owner. By now you’ve been using Homes.com’s Idea Gallery to get your square footage perfectly cleaned, decluttered and staged for showings, so the hard work is done. The focus now is to get potential buyers through your front door, and help them remember your beautiful abode long after they leave. One of the best ways you can do this is by creating a personalized “face sheet” for your home.
A personalized face sheet is different from the MLS listing sheet your real estate agent will create. The MLS listing sheet is an excellent tool that gives buyers an overview of your home’s basic information (square footage, number of bedrooms, dimensions of each room, etc.). A face sheet, however, is your home’s opportunity to really shine!
A face sheet is your chance to showcase the best things about your home, beyond square footage and number of bathrooms. To decide what to include on your home’s face sheet, consider the following:
- What’s your favorite thing about your home? What made you fall in love with it when you decided to buy it?
- What makes your home unique?
- What are some of the neat things you discovered about your home or neighborhood after you moved in?
- When guests visit your home, what do they admire or comment on?
- What will you miss most about your home or neighborhood when you move?
- Have you made any notable upgrades or improvements to your home that might not be obvious from a walk-through?
- Are there any seasonal features you love about your home that aren’t noticeable during the season when you’re selling (e.g. landscaping that may be covered in snow during the winter, heated floors that aren’t being used in the summer, etc.)?
Don’t limit your home’s face sheet to just the features inside – think about your neighborhood, too. I found out after we purchased our current home that our backyard has an incredible view of our city’s annual 4th of July fireworks. Had I known this before we made our offer, I would’ve been even more eager to sign on the dotted line! Something else I’ve grown to appreciate about our home is that it is located on a quiet cul-de-sac off a street that circles back onto itself. Because of this, the only traffic we get is from the people who live here because there is nowhere else to go. Our neighborhood also has a private playground less than a block from our home, and a beautiful walking path that cuts through some green space and leads to shopping, grocery stores and restaurants. Who knew you could get the walkability of downtown living out in a quiet suburb? Most buyers wouldn’t realize these fantastic perks simply from a walk-through at an open house, so you better believe I’ll be adding them to our home’s face sheet!
Your real estate agent may create a face sheet for you (in addition to the MLS listing sheet), or you can create one yourself or enlist a friend for help. If you’d like to make your own, there are a variety of templates available online (search “real estate flyers” or “home fact sheet template”) that can get you started for little or no cost.
A winning face sheet will:
- Go beyond the basics of an MLS listing sheet. Leave the house stats, room dimensions and professional agent lingo for the listing sheet. Your face sheet should describe your home less like a set of walls for sale, and more like the way you first described it to your best friend when you moved in.
- Feature crisp, beautiful photos of the best rooms or features in your home. Have your home photographed when it’s well-lit by natural light, clean, decluttered and staged. Keep in mind that a picture of every room isn’t necessary to make your home memorable, so capture the highlights and leave space on your face sheet to add other information.
- Be printed on glossy paper. Choose something that’s slightly heavier in weight than basic white copy paper. This will really help your photos pop and your home stand out among the listing sheets buyers use to compare homes during their search.
- Include a call to action. What is the next step you want a buyer to take after looking at your home’s face sheet? Contact your real estate agent? Visit your home’s website listing for more information? Schedule a showing? Whatever it is, be sure to add this to your face sheet, along with any necessary contact info and links.
- Get used! Make sure your home’s face sheet is handed out to all potential buyers at all showings and open houses. It should also be available electronically for email, as a download from your listing site, and to post and distribute online via your social networks.
Dusty Rogers is the blogger, mother, maker, decorator and drinker of the wine at All Things G&D - a lifestyle blog where home décor, DIY and organization, healthy meals and kid-friendly snacks, party planning and entertaining all happily play together in the sandbox. Dusty lives in Madison, WI with her husband Greg and their daughter Kate, and she spends her days balancing high maintenance tendencies with a desire to keep things simple.
