01 Dec 2024
If You are Selling Your Home, Have You Considered Staging it?
When you put your home up for sale, your goal is to sell it as quickly and as profitably as possible. A quick coat of paint, dusting, vacuuming and moping will simply not work. Each time a potential buyer walks into you home, you want their immediate reaction to be a Wow! You only have one chance to impress potential buyers.
So how do you get the Wow factor in your home? – by staging it. Simply put, staging is presenting your home in its best and most appealing light to the majority of homebuyers. There are many ways of staging your home and below are a few important ones:
De-Clutter
Eliminate the clutter from your home by at least a half. For some people, this is very hard to do as they may find it very hard to get rid of certain items. A rule-of-thumb: if you haven’t used something in over a year, chances are you will never use again, so get rid of it! Also eliminate furniture items that are unnecessary or unused.
De-Personalise
Remove objects that potential buyers will not be able to identify with such as family photos, religious artifacts and other personal items. You want the buyers to imagine their photos on the wall and not yours. Also sometimes you may get the odd person asking you if they can keep an item of yours when they buy the home. If the item is personal or sentimental, a refusal may offend…
Use Neutral
Make sure you use neutral colors. Potential buyers walking through your home have their own color scheme in mind. If you use styles or colors that they would never select, you have probably turned them off.
Clean Thoroughly
Make sure that your home has been thoroughly cleaned and shines! Wash the windows, polish the mirrors, re-caulk the tub, showers and sink, dust the furniture, replace worn rugs etc. The more your house sparkles the better impression it will leave on the potential buyer, and you have a better chance of selling.
Curb Appeal
If a potential buyer will not get out of the agent’s car because she doesn’t like the exterior of your home, you will never get her inside. Spend some time and money sprucing up the exterior of your home: plant flowers, trim bushes, power wash your driveway, repaint your font door, replace tarnished house numbers and dented mailboxes, etc.
If you learn how to stage your home properly, it will help your home look appealing and welcoming to potential homebuyers. There are professionals that will guide you on how to do this in an effective way. The bottom line is that the money you spend to stage your home will repay itself and there is a better chance of you getting your asking price.