Date Archives: April 2022

Make Your Home Look Like Their Home! 

You've decided to sell your house. One of the most important things you can do to your house to help it sell faster is to stage it. What is home staging? It's pretty much what it sounds like – you are turning your home into a home theatre – setting the stage for potential buyers to see themselves living there. When you get your house ready to sell using home staging, you're showing off its good points, and re-focusing attention away from its weaknesses. And most of all you're helping buyers walk in and never want to leave.  

You know how fun it is to flip through a home furnishings catalog or website? That's what you're aiming for when you're home staging. Make it look like a catalog: clean, bright and spacious. Here are some tips to get your house showroom-ready: 

Home Staging inside: 

• Show off how much counterspace your kitchen and bathroom have by stowing away mostly everything. Make it hotel-room sparse, and add new hand soaps, and new towels and rugs to both rooms. Pare down items on coffee tables, bookshelves and walls.
• Remove all photos of your family, kid's art and personal objects on shelves. You want people to imagine themselves in every room.
• Less is more when it comes to furniture. Show off how much space each room has by paring down the amount of furniture in each room. You want potential buyers to be able to easily walk around. Group furniture into cozy conversation areas.
• Add some sort of work space to one or more rooms. Home offices are a hot seller in the current market. Show off how a room or two can have dual purpose.
• Stage a closet. Pick one bedroom closet and make it as neat as possible, using shelves, baskets and matching hangers. Scent the closet and leave it open to show off the great use of space.

Home Staging outside: 

• Power wash sidewalks, driveways and walkways as well as siding, bricks and stone. Make them sparkle like new.
• Repaint your front door a bright, cheery color.
• Replace your house numbers, mail box, welcome mat and your outdoor lighting if they are worn or outdated.
• Add a fresh layer of mulch to your flower beds and make sure you plant new colorful flowers. Trim trees and bushes.
• Set up a cozy outdoor sitting area on your porch, refreshing cushions and other fabrics if need be.

More tips for making home staging really pay off at an open house: 

• Add cut flowers to several rooms.
• Scented candles add atmosphere. 
• Make sure each room is light and bright – curtains open, lamps on. 
• Erase any sign of your pet, and in fact, keep your pet out of the house during open houses or showings.
• Add a luxury feel to bedrooms with plush rugs, fluffy comforters, extra pillows and fresh sheets. Style it like a hotel room.

Potential buyers want to imagine themselves eating, sleeping and hanging out in your house. Make it easy for them to do just that.