Warming up to the idea of selling your home can take years, but when you’re for it, it can feel like everything happens extremely quickly. So it’s a good idea to plan and take your time to ensure that you’re ready and your property will sell for the most amount of money possible.

These are the top things that contribute to the value of your home and what you should think about while selling.

Square Footage

Many who ask themselves, ‘what is my home worth?’ know that the size of their property is a major factor.  If your home is smaller or the yard is tiny, it will immediately reduce how much buyers are willing to pay.

Unfortunately, you can’t add space into the yard itself without buying adjacent properties, but you can add space to the home if you think it will be valuable enough to you. For example, converting a portion of your attic into a finished room can cost ten to fifteen thousand dollars, and in most markets adds a fifteen to twenty thousand dollar increase in value of your home.

Updated Portions of the Home

How up-to-date is your home?  Although it can take time and money to change out portions of your home, major things like a roof that’ll be expiring soon, or siding that’s been on the house for over twenty years, can pull your property’s value down.

To avoid this, it can be a good idea to take the time to replace these portions of your home, especially if you’re currently in a buyers’ market and need to kill time in the hopes that it will change over to a sellers’ market.

Look At The Current Market

There’s no way to predict the housing market with complete certainty.  In a sellers’ market, you can list your home for whatever you think is fair and possibly expect a bidding war on top of that because buyers are desperate and housing is flying off the market.

In a buyers’ market, you could see major losses on your investment if you’re not careful.  This means having to price competitively and still seeing possible buyers trying to get you to drop the price by tens of thousands of dollars.

Consider the current state of the local housing market, how long it’s been in this state, and if you can afford to wait to sell if it’s not right for you.  IF you don’t have any major deadlines, don’t rush listing a home in a buyers’ market.

Consider Comparables

Look at other properties in your area that have sold recently. Try to pick ones of a similar size, age, and level of updates to your own home.  You can use these comparables to find a good price for your house without having to worry about over or under the listing.

Your property is unique, though, so pay attention to which perks it has that can increase the value of your home and what things you can do to boost it further. Even small changes like staging the property can add tens of thousands of dollars to your home’s value.