Stage Your Home For An Easy Sell
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| Home For An Easy Sell |
In a tough housing market, you need to seize every opportunity to wow potential buyers and to sell your home. Your home may offer great square footage at an affordable price, but so do many other houses on the market. To make a good impression, you need your home to stand apart from the rest. You can easily accomplish this task through staging.
Staging is the process of improving your home before it goes up for sale. It includes both major and minor renovations - everything from replacing old and worn flooring to de-cluttering a bathroom. Listed below are 15 easy ways to stage your home for an open house.
- Place fresh flowers around your home. The smell will entice buyers into a room, and the colors can brighten a house even on the greyest of days
- Roll fresh paint on the walls and trim. Even neutral-colored walls can benefit from a fresh coat of paint. Time and daily wear can give your walls a dingy appearance and make your home appear old and run-down. A fresh coat of cream or white will make your home feel as new as a model suite.
- Arrange throw pillows on the couch and toss a blanket on the foot of the bed. The fabric will add warmth to a room, giving your home a cozy feel.
- Hang landscape photography on the walls instead of family portraits. A buyer needs to picture their family living in your home. Personal family photos remind them that the home belongs to someone else; this could negatively affect their opinion of your house.
- Stack logs by your wood-burning fire place. Call attention to this highly sought-after feature with a fireplace screen and accessories.
- Place an open book on an end table to create a vignette. Place a glass of water beside the book, and leave a pair of eyeglasses lying on the open page. This small vignette reminds home buyers of a leisurely lifestyle, and it makes them feel relaxed and calm.
- In your bathrooms, neatly fold the towels and face cloths. Make sure the toilet paper is fully stocked, and keep the toilet seat down. Bathrooms need to look impeccable, and it is often the simplest touches that make all the difference.
- Update old and dated light fixtures. Since the purchase price of your home often includes fixtures, buyers expect to see modern and stylish lights. Luckily, affordable lighting can be found at all building centers. Just remember that a simple design is universally appealing.
- Update old and rusty faucets. Again, the purchase price includes these fittings, so buyers expect to see new and stylish taps on every sink. Keep your new chrome fixtures gleaming by giving them a quick polish before every open house.
- De-clutter your kitchen counters. Beautiful kitchens have the power to sell a home. All buyers want a spacious kitchen, so make your kitchen seem as large as possible. Keep your counters clear of cereal boxes and chip bags Instead, place a bowl of fresh fruit in a corner and a loaf of bread on a cutting board. These simple touches will make your kitchen feel homey, lived-in, and as large as possible.
- Store children's toys in baskets in the family room. The baskets will add warmth, while the lack of visible clutter will make the room appear larger. If any toys are too big to fit in a basket, hide them in the garage.
- Give all walls and corners a thorough dusting. Cobwebs are often invisible to home owners, but buyers can spot the sticky strands even in the darkest of spaces. Buyers see cobwebs as a sign of neglect, so clear the spiders and their webs out before every viewing.
- Clean up your front hall As the entry point to your home this is the first place a buyer sees when entering your home. A mess of shoes on the floor and a pile of coats in a corner will make the buyer think that your home lacks storage space. Arrange your shoes on a rack and hang your coats in a closet.
- Organize your home office. Piles of papers and stacks of books look messy and unkempt, which may lead the buyers to believe that your entire home is unkempt. A clean and organized desk area makes a good impression on buyers
- Collect clutter into trays and baskets Use a basket in the bathroom to hold soap and shampoo, and keep your remote controls on a tray in the living room. Trays and baskets help reduce clutter and give your home a touch of style.
These staging tricks may seem easy, but the overall effect is nothing short of spectacular. Your home will go from ordinary to unforgettable in a matter of days - all for a reasonable price. Potential buyers will be impressed. And one buyer will be impressed enough to go from home buyer to home owner, and you will finally sell your home.
