Home staging for sale is not simply about cleaning and decluttering your home. It will, however, involve repairs, updates and depersonalising as part of the process, and here are some examples to illustrate.
You can and should repaint rooms in bright colours, replace the carpeting, have it cleaned or both, and repaint as you go, as well as repair screens and window-frames, remove stains and odours, among other things.
Declutter
Regarding staging your home for a speedier sale, it helps to de-clutter: get rid of extra furniture, take down unwanted nicknacks and photos, and minimise the use of closets being jam-packed with items.
A clean home helps potential buyers imagine themselves living there, as well as helps you with better listing photos (and we all know what listing photos are key to making a home feel immediately desirable).
Painting rooms in neutral colours is another inexpensive and easy staging trick to increase buyer appeal. Name-it-and-hate-it hues occur when homeowners apply walls with unlikely colours or eye-searing hues, the kind that could turn off a buyer. As a general rule stick to some basics such as the grays, whites and taupes and always go lightly and neutrally. You might not need to paint every room in the house but simply painting accent walls will increase the age of your house and appeal to the likely buyers.
Hire a Stager
Because we allow buyers to imagine their lives in your home, it will sell for top dollar and, most likely, within your target timeline.
Always ask for names of people they’ve worked for and check online stager reviews; ask about formal training and professional credentials, and look at stagers’ online portfolios of work.
Make sure you know what the stager specialises in and at what price point – don’t hire the woman who works on starter homes to stage your home – and that she’s keeping on top of trends that can give your home something a competitor doesn’t have.
Make Repairs
Statistically, home staging’s purpose is to ensure that prospective buyers can picture themselves living there, as owners, so mementos of the family who currently call this house home, such as family photos and other wall art, are removed from the staged home, and nature-inspired collections are used to furnish coffee tables and kitchen counters.
Little spruce-ups, like new caulk around the bath tub, can make a big difference to getting your house up to par, but steer clear of DIY or remodelling upgrades right before selling – with your realtor’s help, you should decide which investments will fare best with the market your house is in. Your upgrades should always be as neutral as possible (if Italian marble countertops are popping out at you when everyone around you has a lovely linoleum slab, it’s probably best not to spring for the imported stone).
Update the Fixtures
Home staging does what decorating does not and perhaps can’t: it creates a space calculated to appeal to a wider market than the one living in it, with neutral, uncluttered space that’s tailored to the prospective buyer’s imagination, rather than to the people actually living there.
This requires that lighting and lighting fixtures are maintained – that bulbs are replaced and that soot stains are removed from fixtures. Second, bold or bright wall colours should not be present when showing a home for sale – try hanging neutral pieces, such as landscape paintings or still life, that mimic natural settings. Third, photos of your family or political/religious posters should be removed from your home when selling it.
Do a Walkthrough
A final walkthrough should take place before closing to make sure the house that you are buying was indeed maintained according to the terms of the contract. You want to make sure that this final walkthrough happens, otherwise, if toilets do not flush and kitchen cabinets have no shelves, it might end up being your problem and your maintenance expense.
It is crucial for your agent to be at the final walkthrough: you will benefit from having another pair of eyes on your side. She can look with you and draw your attention to staging touches they may have added to sell the home quickly as well as point out areas that need an extra touch that may have been overlooked by those who staged the house.
Brightly painted walls might detract from the character of a period property, whilst neutral tones make a room feel lighter.
