While staging your house sounds like too much work, you are giving buyers room to imagine themselves taking over!
It’s Moving Season! How to Stage Your Home to Sell
Whether you are a first-time seller or a seasoned one, selling your home is a big deal! Home staging can be your secret weapon for a successful home sale. Read on for tips on how to showcase your home and get that competitive edge in the market!
First impressions sell your home faster than any agent or price point could. Highlighting what you love about your home, its strengths, downplaying weaknesses, and appealing to many different prospective buyers will increase your chances of a quick sell at the price you want and deserve.
Clear the clutter.
This is one of the most effective strategies out there to help persuade potential buyers to consider living in your home. By removing unnecessary items from kitchen counters, shelves, tables, and especially closets, you’re allowing buyers to see how much space is available; a top priority for many. Another contributing factor to a “cluttered look” is too much furniture.
Consider removing knickknacks and unnecessary furniture from your home prior to putting it on the market. Donate, toss, or sell what you don’t want to bring to your new home, and begin to pack away the items you wish to bring with you.
Depersonalize your home.
The goal of staging isn’t to make the home look like your home, but to have your home speak to everyone else.
You don’t have to throw every family portrait into a box before you sell, but staging means allowing for others to visualize personalizing your home. Your photos will only cloud that vision! Give yourself permission to move things around and remove accessories on a whim.
Use paint to make your rooms appear larger.
Some floor plans have open spaces, while others don’t. A quick trick to making spaces feel bigger is painting adjoining rooms, such as your living and dining rooms, the same color.
While you may have watched your fair share of home improvement shows, painting interior walls different colors is actually ineffective when it comes to selling your home. Neutral colors provide potential buyers an opportunity to envision their own color pallet, furniture and décor in each room.
Every room should have a purpose.
Don’t leave a buyer guessing. Each room should represent a functional living space, even if you only use a room for storage.
Furnish your space in a functional manner. Potential buyers have a better idea of how they might use the room, too. Repurposing rooms will only add to the value of your home.
Repurpose unfinished projects.
No one wants to finish what you’ve started. If you have an unfinished project, do your best to tie up any obvious loose ends before you allow buyers to walk through your home. For instance, if you finished putting up drywall in the hallway, but haven’t had time to tackle the flooring, a runner rug is a great way to soften up the floor. Make sure you do your best to finish that project prior to moving.
Update your kitchen on a budget.
You don’t have to go overboard with the kitchen if it isn’t within your means. If your cabinets are old and dark, consider giving them a fresh coat of paint. Updating the hardware on the cabinets is effective, as well.
Kitchens are expensive to remodel; both seller and buyer know that. While an outdated kitchen might turn some buyers away, the freshening up of cabinets and their hardware might spark some inspiration in others.
Fix bathroom problems.
No one likes a moldy bathtub. The time it takes to clean up shower scum, remove hair from the drain, or adding a fresh bead of caulk to your shower or tub can make the difference between low offers and offers at or more than asking price.
For an added touch, finish the bathroom off with fresh hand towels in a decorative display and a few battery-operated candles.
Spruce up your curb appeal.
When staging your home, another important component is your exterior! Even in the winter, a little curb appeal can go a long way.
By removing debris, such as leaves and sticks, pruning bushes, trimming hedges, and even planting seasonal flowers, potential buyers get a great first impression of how you have kept and loved your home.
While staging your house sounds like too much work, you are giving buyers room to imagine themselves taking over! You can do large scale home staging or small scale, but the important thing is you really should engage some aspect of home staging to sell for top dollar and quickly.
This information is intended for educational purposes only and is not legal advice and/or an authoritative guide.