How to Sell a 6 Million Dollar Home

How to Sell a 6 Million Dollar Home Ilyce Glink: Home sales are still sluggish. So if you want to sell your house this year, you're probably going to want to get it in tip-top shape. This is especially true if you got a home that's priced at the higher end of things. Let's go see how this seller did. Hey, Jackie. It's so good to see you. I understand you're the broker for this fabulous place. Jacky Teplitzky: Yes, I am. Ilyce Glink: Will you show it to us? Jacky Teplitzky: Absolutely. Let's go. Ilyce Glink: This is an amazing space. It is so open. Jacky Teplitzky: Absolutely. It's basically the width of this living room, the length of the living room, you think about it, you can have a party here for like 300 people without anybody being on top of each other. Ilyce Glink: People really love to live open these days, don't they? Jacky Teplitzky: Absolutely. They want everything to be integrated. They want the kitchen to be part of the living room. It has to be open, it has to be light, but very important, not sterile. A lot of people sometimes go with the staging too far to the extent that people think, well, are people really living here? I want people to come here and to envision themselves living here as their home. So it has to be warm and you have to have some personal artifacts also to show that people are actually living here. Ilyce Glink: But of course not too much, which is one of the things I like about this. It seems to be just the right amount. Like the dining room table, sometimes you might have mail or other things piled up on it, but not here. Jacky Teplitzky: Not only mail but sometimes people put the vase with flowers and they want candles and all that. And my suggestion for this seller was, Look, you have a beautiful table, you have a beautiful chandelier. I want the focus here to be the chandelier so let's keep it just clean. Ilyce Glink: What do you do about pets? Because so many people have dogs and they have cats, I know that these homeowners have pets, but I don't see a pet and I don't smell a pet. Jacky Teplitzky: Very important is to move everything related to a pet to a place that maybe the people that are going to walk around are not going to see it. So the best way is basically to get the pets out of the home whenever we show. Ilyce Glink: Wow! Jacky, this is an amazing bathroom. But I'll bet like all bathrooms, it's kind of tough to keep it clean enough for a showing, right? Jacky Teplitzky: Especially if those showings are happening first thing in the morning after people just took showers. Ilyce Glink: Oh, and it would be smelly in here. You got to get the air flowing. How do you help sellers get it ready for a showing? Jacky Teplitzky: What I tell them is the basic things that they have to change. They have to change it for the duration of the time that we are showing the apartment. So it's not like, okay, I'm going to declutter and then it's going to be cluttered and then I have to declutter again. So what we try to tell them is, try to reorganize the way that you do things. The other thing is to make sure that all the towels are the same color so it doesn't look funny. So everything has to be neat, everything hash to be organized and ready to show. Ilyce Glink: That apartment really looks like it's show-ready. But no matter what the price point of the home you're trying to sell, it should always look like a million bucks. I'm Ilyce Glink for CBSMoneyWatch.com.