If you are a homeowner and planning to sell your home, the ultimate goal is to sell it quickly and get at or above your asking price. One of the key ways to accomplish these goals is to stage your home like a professional. Staging your home is the process of making a house look its best when trying to sell it. Successfully staging your home will set the scene for buyers to visualize themselves buying your home and living there. Let’s take a look at what it takes to successfully stage and market your home like a professional.
Curb Appeal Matters
Buyers will often ride around and look at potential homes and neighbors before deciding on viewing the inside of a home. Homes with great curb appeal will entice potential buyers to take a look on the inside. The following tips will help improve the curb appeal of any home:
- Pressure wash siding and walkways
- Ensure house numbers are clear and easy to see
- Revitalize landscaping and flowers
- Ensure lawn is freshly mowed
- Decorate porch with inviting furniture or plants
Deep Clean Your Home
This is probably the least costly and least fun part of staging. As a homeowner, you should ensure your home is clean from top to bottom. Ensure floors are swept, mopped, and shined. Window sills and panes should be sparkling, and countertops should be decluttered and cleaned as well. Invest in grout cleaner and ensure all grout in bathrooms are clean. If you want to spend some money, hiring a professional cleaning company is definitely recommended, but do not skip this step!
Declutter
Clutter is the absolute enemy of successful staging. Decluttering is not easy but it must be done to ensure potential buyers see the full potential of the house. The last thing you want as a seller is for the buyer to only focus on your “stuff” when looking at your home. You want them to visualize “their” stuff in your home. Clear surfaces, floors, and closets to maximize the space that buyers see. Remove items that point to a particular style of decorating, but the style that you like may not be the style of potential buyers. Give them a clean palate to paint their own masterpiece. Ensure personal pictures of family or friends are removed from the home. The last thing you want is for a potential buyer to spend time looking at your personal photos and not the home.
Complete Maintenance Projects
Part of staging a home is tackling the small maintenance projects that have been left undone. Inspect the house for tiny cracks in caulking, holes, scratches, and paint that needs updating. Buy an ample amount of caulk to fix areas that need repair. Buyers will be paying attention to the condition of the walls and will notice these small things. Correcting small maintenance items ahead of time will also lead to a much better home inspection when an offer is made and accepted.
Change up Furniture
Experiment with different arrangements of your furniture to create a space that is inviting. Ensure the furniture is not against the walls. Utilize flower arrangement, book displays, and tasteful, neutral art to create conversation areas in the home. Choose colors that are neutral. Loud colors such as green and orange can really distract buyers from seeing the potential of the house. You can never go wrong with white, but other neutral colors like beige, gray, or mocha work well. In the bedroom, ensure that the linens on the bed are clean and fit the bed nicely. A bedroom bench at the foot of the bed with storage is a nice feature in bedroom as well as tasteful art.
Emphasize Closet Space
Closet space is prime real estate for most home buyers. A home with enough closet space always stays on the list of possibilities, but a home with little closet space will fall off the list. Remove any excess items from the closet to show off the open space in the closet.
Have a Theme for Each Room
Buyer should be able to see the usefulness of each room in your house. Do not use a room for storage or odd pieces of furniture. Turn that spare room into a room with a purpose. It could become a guest room, an office, a game room, theater room, or whatever else you can imagine. If you do not have the furniture to pull off the look, rent some inexpensive furniture or borrow furniture from a friend. The benefits will be huge.
Beware of Odors
Odors should be eliminated if at all possible before showing your home. You may love your pets, but everyone is not a pet owner and many people may be allergic to pet and pet odors. If you have pets, steam clean all rugs and carpets and ensure all pet hair is vacuumed and washed from surfaces. Ensure no food with strong scents are cooked before the showing or that the house has been properly ventilated if it has. Beware pet odors. Some experts recommend burning incense or candles when buyers visit, but I am on the fence with this recommendation. I personally think rooms should be as odorless as possible.
Market with Direct Mail Postcards
Direct mail postcards for real estate are the perfect way to contact with potential buyers. A direct mail postcard can be personalized with pictures of the home and keep the image of the home in the memory of potential buyers. These direct mail postcards for real estate can help you show off all of the staging that you completed on your home and find new prospects for the purchase of your home. Prospects often hold on to postcards well after the viewing and often look at the images for many days afterwards. There are many companies that offer these services, including Wise Pelican, at reasonable rates. Research will uncover many more benefits of postcards for real estate marketing.
Summary
As you can see, it makes sense to put some additional time and effort into staging. Many of the tips can be completed with little cost. You will have to make some smart decisions when staging your home and enlist the help of professionals when needed to add value to your home or assist with the marketing of your home. The next step is to sit back and wait for the offers to roll in!
