Staging Your Home For A Quick Sale

Elsewhere in this blog, there are tips on how to prepare your home for sale. Here, though, let's talk about "staging" the house....making it more appealing to buyers. Why stage the house? Simple...a cluttered house full of personal items distracts potential buyers - it makes it harder for them to see how they can personalize the house. Unclutter, unclutter, unclutter! Take the personal photos down, pull the graduation announcements off the refrigerator (along with the magnets!), and take a critical look at your house.

WHY STAGE?
How we live in our house and how we sell it are two different things. To compete with other similar listings, your house must stand out. People must be able to see how the house would "live" yet they need to visualize their own things in it. Which seems a contradiction, perhaps, but the answer is easy...keep things simple, but with a bit of pizazz.

Will an empty house show better than a staged one? Not necessarily. While it isn't advisable to have too much in a house to show it, a bit of warmth here and there never hurts, and sometimes furniture can actually better show the scale of a room. Recently, a client looked at a builder's spec house which was empty and said "Nope, not for us." A week later, I had occasion to go back and saw that the house had been staged. I cajoled them into going back (since the house met all their requirements) and their reaction was totally different. They bought the house - and wanted to buy the builder's staging items (the builder graciously supplied them with the sources for all the items, although she declined to sell her staging accessories)

Staging need not be a "big" thing. Sometimes a bit of furniture (minimal) can help define a room. Sometimes it's just a few items to add warmth and color (a painting propped up on the mantel, a vase of flowers, some towels in a bathroom, a lamp, etc.)

STEPS TO STAGE A ROOM:
1. Stand and try to see what a potential buyer would see. What's the first impression they would have? Do you want to go into the room and take a look? The room should literally invite you in.
2. What's the purpose of the room?
3. Decide what furniture, if any, should stay in the room; remove what isn't necessary
4. If need be, rearrange the furniture to present the room in a more favorable light (take out furniture, turn the arrangement at an angle to break the severity of the space, etc.)
5. Take out an over-abundance of accessories; keeping counter tops and table tops uncluttered gives a clean look to a house, yet the accessories which remain add warmth to the room
6. Stand in the doorway. Look at the room now that you've made changes. Is it more inviting? If so, you've accomplished your goal!