Preparing to Sell Your Home
When you’re selling your home, you want it to look its absolute best for the potential buyers who walk through the door. That’s where home staging comes in.
Home staging is a method of decorating meant to highlight your home’s most impressive assets as well as helping potential buyers visualize the home as their own. Do it right, and you should have no problem selling your home quickly.
Preparing and staging often takes time well spent but usually doesn't take a huge financial investment to get an incredible return in both saved time on the market and higher selling price.
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Stage where it counts
Not all rooms are considered equal when it comes to home staging. You want to focus your efforts on the rooms that have the biggest potential to influence buyers’ decisions, and spend less time on the rooms that won’t make much of a difference.
These rooms usually include: living room, master bedroom, and kitchen.
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De-personalize and declutter the space
One of the primary objectives of home staging is to help prospective buyers visualize the space as their own. The fastest way to accomplish this is to set as blank of a canvas as you can. You want the home to have style and charm, but it should be devoid of personal touches that suggest this home belongs to the seller, not the buyer.
Remove un-necessary items in closets, personal pictures and clutter. When preparing your house for sale, emotionally moving out of your home will help potential buyers feel like they can emotionally move in. If you have broken, damaged or un-necessary furniture, remove it from the home. This will make the space feel larger.
Shannon Watters
3. Clean like you’ve never cleaned before
Deep clean like you never have before, clean fresh air intakes, refrigerator, baseboards, under the beds, EVERYWHERE!
4. Patch and repair
Home staging is a good time to tackle the tiny nicks, scratches, holes, and other impurities that signal neglect to buyers.
5. Go neutral
This staging tip is a bit more time and cost intensive, but it can make a major difference when it comes to your sale price and time on the market.
6. Make a good first impression
Having an inviting curb appeal is very important since it is the first impression they have of your home. Having fresh flowers and pleasing natural smells in the entryway and throughout the house heightens all senses and draw people in with the most positive impression. Focus on bright warm light and fresh healthy plants spread throughout the house. Do not fill the home with overwhelming artificial smells but fill it with fresh, clean, subtle scents.
7. Rearrange your furniture
You want there to be as much open, walkable space as possible. This helps buyers navigate the space, and also helps them better visualize their own furniture in each room. Put extraneous furniture in storage to get it out of the way, focusing on getting rid of any oversized pieces, damaged pieces, and those that that don’t match the rest of the room. With the furniture that remains, rearrange it to make the room "flow", look and feel as spacious as possible.