Selling Your Home Furnished? Price Your Used Furniture Well For The Sale
As you prepare to sell your home, you’ve probably considered all the options. You’ve looked at selling your home for cash and selling it as is, but have you thought through the value of selling your home furnished? The value of furniture fluctuates a lot because it is so complicated and expensive to move when moving across the country, so find the right value for your furniture by factoring all the relevant details into your price.
Step 1: Get to know your own needs and the buyer’s goals
First, you don’t want to sell pieces of furniture that you like if you’ll just have to turn around and buy more expensive replacements to feature in your next home. However, if you’re selling a vacation home, for instance, and that home’s furniture doesn’t impact your overall furniture needs, you may have much more motive to sell the home furnished. Similarly, decide ahead of time if there are items that you aren’t willing to part with. Ideally, don’t show a home that you want to sell furnished with things in it that you don’t intend to sell, since you might get a motivated buyer but they could see your prize credenza as the linchpin of the home sale.
Similarly, find out what the buyers’ temperament is regarding furnishings. Are they shopping exclusively for furnished homes, or simply willing to buy the furniture if the home looks particularly perfect with your furnishings? Not every buyer is highly motivated to find furnished homes, so if you want to sell the furniture more than they want to buy it, you’ll want to reflect that in your price negotiations.
Step 2: Evaluate per-unit prices for a potential itemized list
Furniture has variable markets, particularly because many heavy items cost so much to move or ship. Still, having an itemized price list for the pieces you’re selling can help to justify the price you end up putting on the whole lot of furniture that you’re selling. By opting to have a list like this, you can gauge why a buyer is balking at the price you’ve offered – they may just be trying to drive a hard bargain, but they also may be considering backing out of the deal. If they are, it’s often worth cutting the furniture price to preserve a high-quality contract to sell the home, particularly if it is high-end or unique in any way.
Step 3: Prepare to negotiate due to convenience, price lessness, and design fit
As we mentioned above, your itemized list isn’t the end. If you spent time and money designing the home with one-of-a-kind fixtures and furnishings, something in the price should reflect the hours of work that created the look; people pay a lot for high quality interior design. Similarly, if the buyer specifically doesn’t want to have to move old furniture from somewhere else, you may be able to get a better price from them. Finally, for one-of-a-kind pieces, like handmade items from overseas, you might be able to negotiate a higher total price simply because they couldn’t buy anything like that item on their own.
