The home selling market is hot right now! There are many super-serious buyers who need and want to buy quickly which is great for those looking to sell their homes. However, in order to really take advantage, it’s important to properly stage your home! As someone who has sold homes, and someone who has professionally staged homes for Real Estate, here as some quick tips.
De-personalize – but it isn’t what you think!
Oftentimes sellers think that they need to take down every picture they have of their family and that honestly isn’t the case. People want to be able to walk into a home and picture their family making their imprint and sometimes your family pictures can help do that! So while you don’t want HUNDREDS of family photos on the wall, having a few well-placed photos can actually help you in the selling process. What is important in de-personalizing is getting rid of/hiding the fact that people live in the house. Meaning, there should be nothing on the counters, towels should not be out in the bathroom, clothes should not be in the laundry baskets, and everything needs to be CLEAN. You want a home to feel cozy, but not lived in. I know the towel thing might seem silly, but they automatically make a bathroom seem a little “dirtier” to a buyer despite that they are a sign that people bathe.
Remember to stage the table
This is especially important for any real estate pictures being taken (and I feel like it’s HIGHLY important that you have pictures done professionally and not just from a cell phone) but it can also be highly effective when buyers come through too. The kitchen and dining area are major selling points to any house. When you set the table, have fresh flowers and colored placemats or napkins. You are showcasing to the buyer the space that the home has to offer. It’s also a great way to tie in any colored accent walls that you have that you don’t want to paint. I once helped stage a home that had a bright red accent wall. Their realtor thought they would need to paint, but with staging and adding just a few spots of red on the table and on the counter, it helped to actually draw attention away from the wall because the space felt more cohesive.
Bedroom closets are important
I tend to see a lot of sellers store everything in bedroom closets, and while you can possibly get away with doing this in one of the bedrooms, it’s not something you can do throughout the house. The last thing you want any buyer to think is that home isn’t going to have enough space for them. When my husband and I sold our house, I literally cleared out half of all the closets and put everything in my car until the house was sold. Was it convenient? No. Did it work? YES. Especially when it comes to a master closet, we tend to just fill up all available space we have, but what that does is make a space feel smaller. When you clear it out, the buyer will instead get the impression that they will have tons of room helping them picture themselves in the space.
While I can’t give away all my secrets (because I would be out of a job!), these are some great tips to help you get started in staging your home if you are thinking of selling.
