Here are our Top Ten Tips for selling your Home in Hawaii (in no particular order of importance.)

Make a memorable, inviting the first impression
The entrance to your home is a crucial part of the sale. If you have a rusted bike next to the door with a half-dead plant, it matters how nice it is inside. Put extra time into dressing up the front door and foyer of the house, but don’t over clutter it. Fresh flowers, vibrant plants, and attractive furniture will help make a great first impression.

Fix items that are easy and cheap to fix.
Upgrading small things like door handles, patching holes, and cleaning well (clean the carpets, bathrooms, organize closets, etc…) If you want to do some really big upgrades, it’s a little bit too late. You don’t know if your prospective buyer would rather upgrade it differently, and a lot of the times you’ll spend way more money upgrading than you will get back from the extra purchase price.

The right Broker
Make sure you get a broker that understands your area well and has experience selling your type of property.  Evan Harlow with Maui Elite Property is one of the best Maui realtors and comes highly recommended for buying and selling Maui property.

Lower your price
After evaluating the price of your home via appraisal, consider listing your property for a little less. Brave sellers will find that bidding wars take place between different interested parties that have their hearts set on your Maui home. This can be far more advantageous than listing it at the correct value and hoping someone bites.

Increase lighting
When showing your home, make sure all light from the windows is unrestricted, meaning you may need to wash them well, move furniture, and pull back drapes. You may also need to cut back landscaping to get more direct light. Make sure that every area of your house is lit up, which may take you being creative with extra lights in areas that you may not need them.

Landscape and views
If you have any view at all, and there’s an opportunity to increase that view by changing the landscaping, do it. It may be heart-wrenching to cut back that beautiful old tree and get rid of some bushes, but the value in your home will increase and those bushes and trees can grow back later.

Get and clear storage
It’s worth getting a storage facility when selling your home. Move at least 1/2 of your storage out of the house to help showcase how much room you have to store things. This goes for garages, closets, crawl spaces, attics, and anything that would be used for storage. Also, declutter every open space in the home. The fewer knick-knacks in view, the better.

Takedown personal photos and relocate the animals
Some homes soak up the pet smell, so if you’re serious about selling your home, find a way to get these particular pets out of the house for at least a few days before showing. Clear up all the dog toys, food, and litter boxes. Also, take down all the personal photos you have around the house. People are more likely to buy a home if they can imagine themselves living there instead of you and your family. You can keep up photos that show landscapes or other attractive things, but keep your family out of sight.

Update the kitchen
Since people seem to spend much of their waking hours at home in their kitchen (or wish they did), it’s easy to understand how important it is to sell it at its best. New paint, new hardware, and a very clean and tidy kitchen will give your buyer more incentive. Updating all the appliances is a great idea, but some studies show that updating 1 prominent appliance is enough to make your buyer feel like everything is new.

Move out for a while
If you’re able to, consider moving out of the house for a few weeks while it’s being shown. If you get the house to perfect showing condition, it’s very easy to get it out of that condition with a few days of normal living. It takes a lot of work to get it perfect, so treating yourself to a little staycation on your island, or staying with some friends can be worth it.