Price, location and condition all play a part in whether or not someone decides to buy your house. But you can only control one of them.

Is it price? Not really: While sellers can price their properties however they see fit, it’s the market that ultimately sets the final figure. Location? While it’s possible to move a house to a different part of town, no one actually does that.

That leaves the condition of your place as the only element within your control. Your home's condition plays a huge part in helping buyers picture themselves living there.

Much has been written about the importance of adding a new coat of paint, repairing leaky faucets and replacing worn-out appliances. But the way the house is presented is just as important.

Once the For Sale sign goes up, you need to stop thinking of it as your private residence: It is about to be someone else’s, and capturing that person's interest is a matter of business. So take a long, hard look at your house through the critical eyes of a would-be buyer.

Start by removing all the clutter you’ve learned to live with over the years -- “edit” your house, as home stager Kathy Streib prefers to say.

“Buyers are looking at your space and its livability,” the expert says. “Open space also brings about a sense of calm.”

If you’re like most homeowners, you’ll find clutter everywhere, from the front door to the back. In the entryway, for example, you might have a spot where the kids dump their dirty shoes, or perhaps a well-used umbrella stand or coat rack. Put them out of sight so visitors don’t start with an unsightly mess. The new owner may eventually do exactly what you have done, but don’t show them it’s necessary.

In the kitchen, put away all those small appliances you only use once in a while: the toaster, the mixer or the electric can opener, perhaps. People value counter space, so show them you have plenty. While you’re at it, straighten up those cabinets -- people will definitely peek inside.

Would-be buyers will open your closets, too. If yours are stuffed full, weed out the things you haven’t worn in years and donate them to a secondhand store. If you have seasonal stuff, box it up and put it elsewhere.

Go through your entire house this way -- room by room, one at a time, looking for things that can be put away or disposed of entirely. And don’t just toss all your excess belongings in the attic and garage: Buyers will be eyeballing those spaces just like the rest of the house.

Once you’ve accomplished this (admittedly herculean) task, take a hard look at your furniture. There are probably a few pieces you can either do without or move slightly to make the house look more spacious. Pushing your sofa back a foot or two or taking the leaf out of the dining room table will do the trick.

You'd be surprised what a difference this can make. There’s a house a couple of doors down from mine: It’s the exact same size, but it appears much smaller because it is overloaded with furniture and other stuff. In fact, the owner says that if I ever sell, he wants to buy my house because it's far more spacious. In reality, it only appears that way because I have just enough furniture for the two of us.

While you're doing all this, try to depersonalize your space. It’s OK to have a handful of personal pictures and mementos, but if your family's faces are on the walls in every room, it will be hard for buyers to picture themselves living there. So for the time being, put them away.

By the time you get to staging, of course, you will have already repaired or replaced everything in the house that wasn't working properly. If you decide the house could use a new coat of paint, pick a neutral color: Not only will antique white make the place appear larger, but bold orange walls are likely to turn off a good part of the market.

Finally, don’t forget to give your house a deep, thorough cleaning. Wash the floors, walls, windows and screens. You can do this work yourself, or it may be cost-effective to hire a professional.

Either way, once the house is spotless, keep it that way -- not just until you have a contract, but until the sale actually closes. Buyers often return to the house several times before closing. If they don’t like what they see on a second or third visit, there all are kinds of ways they can back out of the contract.

Thirty days isn’t a long period of time. But when a house sits on the market for that long without so much as a nibble, the listing becomes what’s known in the trade as “stale.”

And right now, according to Redfin, more houses have been on the market for 30 days or more than any other time in recent memory, with nearly 2 in every 3 listings in June at least meeting the 30-day threshold.

The share of languishing listings has been accelerating thanks to a bump in more houses being offered for sale at the same time that demand has waned in the face of stubbornly high mortgage rates. “Less-desirable listings are sitting on the market, causing unsold inventory to pile up,” Redfin reports.

Despite this trend, the brokerage firm notes that properties in desirable neighborhoods that are move-in ready are still selling quickly. Listings not meeting these criteria, though, are starting to stack up. Indeed, over 2 in every 5 houses for sale in June had been listed for 60 or more days and still saw no contract.

When a listing is at least 30 days old, it tells buyers that the house is a dud, that it isn’t even worth looking at because something is wrong. And a lot could be wrong.

Perhaps the marketing is lacking, with cellphone photographs and less-than-sparkling descriptions. Maybe the offering comes with a slew of contingencies that indicate the seller is too picky. Or perhaps the house can be shown only at specific times, limiting would-be buyers’ ability to gain access.

Any one of these could be factors in turning away buyers. But the No. 1 reason a house pines away for 30 days or longer is price -- as in overpriced. It is a sure sign that the seller really doesn’t want to sell.

“You can price your house to sell or not,” wrote Doug Campbell, a Tampa-area agent, on the ActiveRain real estate site. He gave a big shoutout to sellers who overvalue their properties, thereby “making it much easier for buyers to recognize that properly priced houses really are good deals.”

Some agents believe in a two-week window. If the house doesn’t sell within 14 days, a price adjustment is in order. But most agree that 30 is the magic number. “I talk with my sellers about the ‘30-day sale’ and that we need to price to sell in 30 days to avoid getting stale,” wrote agent and author Jennifer Allan-Hagedorn on ActiveRain.

Dawn Brenengen of Trailwood Realty in Raleigh, North Carolina, comments on an ActiveRain post by Coral Gundlach with an anecdote of how she once had to turn down her best friend who wanted to list her place for $30,000 more than it was worth. “She was hoping that some sucker would just walk by and decide they couldn't live without buying it,” she writes.

Some blame listing agents as well as sellers for properties going stale. Too many agents are enabling this behavior, they grouse, labeling the conduct as wasteful of both the time and energy of buyers and their agents.

The moral to all this is to latch onto a top-flight professional who will know which way the pricing winds are blowing. They’ll look at how places similar to yours have fared of late to determine whether prices are rising, falling or remaining stagnant. They’ll look to see how many days these “comparables” have been on the market, and they’ll do a complete market analysis to determine what your place should sell for.

Of course, setting a listing price is ultimately the seller’s call. They can listen to their buddy Joe who magically pulls a price out of his left ear, or they can decide on their own to go high in hopes that one buyer who is flush with cash will find their place so appealing that he just can’t resist it, no matter how overpriced it really is.

But true professional real estate agents have years of experience and take pride in pricing properties correctly. When they determine a listing price, they price houses to sell, not to sit for weeks to be ignored by agents and their buyers alike.

“The challenge for me is getting the sellers to listen to the facts and figures,” wrote Scott Cowan of RE/MAX in Olympia, Washington, as a comment to Allan-Hagedorn’s post. “Too many sellers have a(n) inflated opinion of their property vs. the competition on the market.”

There’s an adage in the real estate business that goes “list high, list long,” meaning that if you set a higher price, the listing will be on the market for longer than need be. But with the number of houses going up for sale rising, that doesn’t work anymore.

Rather, why not price your place right to begin with? Otherwise, your listing will just go stale until it expires, at which point you’ll either have to pull your house off the market altogether or re-list with another agent who will likely insist that the place be priced at what it should have been in the first place.

At last, Uncle Sam’s primary program for helping homeowners and buyers rehab their properties is moving into the 21st century with updates that will make repairs, whether small or major, much more feasible.

The Federal Housing Administration’s 203(k) Rehabilitation Mortgage Insurance Program allows borrowers to add rehab and repair costs to their FHA mortgage. The resulting single loan can be used to purchase a house or refinance an existing mortgage. It covers structural repairs such as foundations and new roofs, modernization of kitchens and bathrooms, and projects to increase energy efficiency and climate resilience.

The program, however, hadn’t been updated in years. Eight long months ago, the FHA asked lenders and other industry players what they thought about its proposed changes.

Finally, earlier this month, the agency published new rules to modernize the program.

There are two variations of the 203(k) loan: the standard version, used for financing substantial remodeling and repairs, and the limited version, for minor remodeling and nonstructural repairs. Under the new guidelines, borrowers using the limited loan can borrow up to $75,000 over and above their mortgages -- a huge increase from the former limit of $35,000.

Besides raising the loan limits, the FHA is giving borrowers more time to complete the work: up to 12 months for the standard loan and nine months for the limited version. Both versions had a six-month deadline, previously.

For borrowers who choose to use a consultant to help them complete their 203(k) applications and supervise the work being done, the FHA has adopted a new fee structure that allows, among other things, for the consultant's charges to be added to the loan amount -- thereby relieving borrowers of that additional out-of-pocket cost.

In hopes of encouraging more consultants to participate in the program, the agency also increased the types and amounts of allowable fees consultants can charge. It had been nearly 30 years since permissible consultant fees had been updated.

While announcing the changes, FHA Commissioner Julia Gordon called them “long overdue.” The changes must be implemented by lenders no later than Nov. 4.

Buying that first house is an exhilarating experience. But when the buying cycle ends and the place is finally yours, the homeownership journey is actually just beginning. There's a lot to consider before you actually move in.

For example, you’ll want to change the locks on all your exterior doors, including the garage. After all, you don’t know who the previous owner gave keys to. And don’t forget to change the codes on your garage door openers.

Another step: Consider a deep, thorough cleaning of the place, especially the carpets and appliances. The previous owner likely cleaned the house before listing it so that it would show in its best light, but that may have been months prior to the time you'll take occupancy. Hiring a professional cleaning company to refresh the place is a good idea.

You’ll also want to set up accounts for each of your utilities -- water, gas and electric -- so they’ll be operational when you arrive. Don’t forget to place a change-of-address form with the post office, and start notifying all your recurring accounts of your new location. You’ll likely miss a few, but you can play catch-up later.

Another important pre-move-in step is to make sure all of the detectors -- smoke, carbon monoxide and radon -- are operational. Even if they are, you might want to install fresh batteries; you never know when they were last changed. And if the house lacks any of these lifesaving sensors, install them right away.

You'll want to locate the main water shut-off valve, the circuit breaker and any other critical operating systems controls. You never know when you might have to use them, so knowing where they are and how they operate is important.

Once you move in, time will move slowly at first. You'll unpack, get settled and put things where they belong. You’ll get to know your neighbors, explore your new surroundings and learn where essential services are located. And you might enroll yourself and your family members in sports, classes and other social and recreational programs.

Eventually, you’ll establish a daily routine and settle into homeownership. It might not go smoothly at first, but as time moves on, the bumps in the road will feel more like mere nuisances.