Selling Your Home While You Are On Vacation.

It’s Take a Tip Tuesday. Do you know what to do with your house when you’re going out of town? This is what you need to know when you are selling your home when you go on vacation, Hi, my name is Kristina Smallhorn, your real estate whisperer for Ascension Parish and we’re getting ready to go out of town. But do you know what to do with your house if it’s listed for sale and you’re going out of town? You’re going to want to know these tips.

Make sure you don’t leave any wash in the washing machine. Imagine leaving clothes in the washing machine for three days and what that smell would be like. Buyers wouldn’t really like that when they walk into your laundry room. I think we got everything. Oh, wait one second. You see this right here? These plugins that make your house smell so good? Either turn them all the way off or just take them straight out of the wall. The thing is is that when you’re not in the house and the air is not circulating a lot, when the buyers walk in the house the smell is just overwhelming and then they smell nothing but floral and they think that you’re hiding some kind of smell. So when you’re going out of town, just either turns them all the way down or just pull them straight out of the wall and put them in a safe drawer until you get back into town. So when you’re heading out of town you’re going to want to turn off your water. I’m going to give this case in point. That picture has been floating around Facebook since Christmastime and somebody left their water and of course, the water came through the ceiling and caused quite a problem. Even if you’re in a frozen tundra area where it’s going to freeze like a glacier, you’re still going to want to turn off your water. Look, you know if you have a ceiling the pipes are above you, anything can happen. Just turn off the water. All right so we’re going to attempt this, okay? Did it. All right so I nearly killed myself but I did get the water off. And when you turn the water off you’re going to want to let your real estate agent know that you turned the water off. ‘Cause what if your house goes under contract and you have an inspection? And then inspector goes in and says, “The water doesn’t work.” So you’re going to want to let your real estate agent and the home inspector know where that water turn on is. There’s one more thing I forgot to tell you. Make sure that you go ahead and give an extra key to a neighbor or to your real estate agent. If you don’t have time to go over to your real estate agent’s office, it’s always good to give it to a neighbor. Not only can they pick up the mail and the newspapers that have been left out, they can also water your plants. Sometimes these electronic lockboxes technology doesn’t work the way we want it to and it’s good to have an extra key that you’ve given to a neighbor so that way they can let in a buyer’s agent to show your home. I know when you’re heading out of town you are probably going to want to set your alarm system to your house. Make sure that your real estate agent has that alarm code ’cause it’s happened before that a buyer’s agent walks into the house, the alarm goes off and they didn’t give the alarm code to the selling agent. So make sure that you give that to them. All right, one last tip. When you’re getting on your flight, make sure you let your real estate agent know what time your flight’s at. You don’t want to miss any contract deadlines when you are on a flight and you never know if you get a contract when you’re on that flight, you don’t want to miss that deadline either. Bye. Bye. If you’d like some more information about buying homes in Ascension Parish area you can always visit my website at yourrealestatewhisperer.com. My name is Kristina Smallhorn, your real estate whisperer for Ascension Parish. And I tell you all this because you matter.

kristina.smallhorn@exprealty.com,info@yourrealestatewhisperer.com eXp Realty LLC,2900 Westfork Dr. Suite 401, Baton Rouge LA 70817 225-246-1812,Office (225) 412-9982 ext# 149 Kristina Smallhorn is a licensed REALTOR® with the state of Louisiana