Brodie Stephens- Broker Associate Selling Homes in Folsom | Placerville | Pollock Pines | El Dorado Hills | Elk Grove | Roseville | Rocklin

Homeowners are always looking to fine-tune the look of their homes before they put their house on the market. But all too often an area that gets forgotten is the closet.

Everyone seems to have more stuff than ever before and a lot of that stuff gets crammed into the closets. Then when you list the home on the market, and Mr. and Mrs. Buyer come to have a look, they reach for a closet door and are greeted with an overstuffed, unorganized mess. The prospective buyers don’t see your valuables as prized possessions; instead what they see is too much stuff and too little space. Often buyers can’t picture their belongings in a home that’s filled with clutter. That’s why a lot of agents will recommend organizing, not just the space you see immediately upon entering the home, but also the closets.

“I think that instead of being kind of a luxury, now it’s something that everybody thinks they need,” says Paula Gallegos, co-owner of Conejo Closet Designs in Thousand Oaks, California. Gallegos says an organized, well-planned closet can be a huge attraction. “Who wants just a regular shelf and pole when you have all these capabilities of the hangers and the drawers and the belt racks, shoe shelves — everybody needs storage” she says.

The requests for closet organizers are growing in an interesting way. Closets are turning into spaces where people don’t just store their clothes. They’re also considered an important upgrade for many buyers. Just as a large renovated kitchen and bathroom area are typically more appealing to buyers, so too are organized closets.

“They’re getting bigger. They want more bells and whistles. They want more accessory items. There is one home we’re bidding (on the project) right now that has an upstairs bedroom and they’re putting a refrigerator in the closet,” says Gallegos.

At the top of every homeowner’s list is how to maximize space. “Sometimes that might be extending your organizers higher than what you have, maximizing the overhead space and sometimes it’s a matter of using the extra space you have below with baskets and shoe shelves and things like that,” says Gallegos.

One of the newest trends for closets is being borrowed from the dry cleaning industry. It’s a rotary closet device called Rotabob and it literally brings the clothes that are stuck in hard-to-reach places right to you.

“For instance, you probably see a lot of closets that are not too deep — you know a reach-in closet and they’ve got a real long return where you look down the side of it and it’s two or three feet of really hard-to-get-at space. So, with the Rotabob you can install one of those and just basically bring your clothes to you instead of having to reach in for them,” explains Gallegos.

They carry a price tag of about $900 to $1,200 for a unit with installation but after it’s put in there’s nothing else to do. “They are stainless steel units with ball bearings so there’s no maintenance and no electricity and they work for just about any closet,” says Gallegos.

These units are becoming popular not just for closets but also laundry rooms, storage spaces, and garages. “Someone actually put it in a utility closet and loaded it up with baskets and hung their mops and rags on the handles and put their cleaning supplies in the basket,” says Gallegos.

Being organized on the outside of your home creates curb appeal that gets prospective buyers in the door. Then keeping them there long enough to decide they can’t live without your home requires careful, well-thought-out organization inside your home including those areas that you don’t notice right away but your prospective buyers most certainly will.

Written by Phoebe Chongchua

Want to get top dollar when you sell your home?

Listen to what professional appraisers say.

Their job is to determine the true market value of homes so they know what makes a property sell for the greatest amount and can tell you how to best ready your home for market now and later.

“A few years ago, houses were selling quickly with little effort. Now many homeowners actually have to make improvements before they can sell their home,” said appraiser Mike Evans, a Fellow of the American Society of Appraisers (ASA).

In the term, cosmetic touch ups can help a home sell a faster. They include:

 
The typical U.S. homeowner in a negative equity position will begin to build positive home equity by late 2015 or early 2016, according to a forecast by First American CoreLogic. In some depressed markets, typical borrowers with negative equity may not experience positive equity until 2020 or later, according to the report.  Research conducted by First American CoreLogic indicates more than 11.3 million, or 24 percent, of all residential properties with mortgages, had negative equity at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009.

Although house price appreciation will, over time, offset negative equity, in most cases, amortization will be a more significant remedy to negative equity. According to the report, over the next 10 years, the average loan balance will decrease by an annual rate of 3.3 percent, while home price are expected to increase at a three-percent annual rate over the next decade.

More info.