Staging is the process of decorating a home to make it more alluring for sellers. Essentially, it involves repurposing your home as a marketable piece of real estate using “visual merchandising.” It can be one of the best and easiest ways to sell your house at its maximum potential value because it highlights the best parts about your property to buyers without being pretentious.
Here are a few things to keep in mind while staging your own home for sale:
1. Fix Your Exterior
In real estate, first impressions make or break a sale. Many buyers often scope out listings on the go to filter out potential choices. The first thing that they’d observe is the exterior of a property. If the exterior appears run-down and disorganized, most buyers wouldn’t even give your listing a second look.
You should prioritize improving your curb appeal to attract more buyers. Here are a few tips to help you out:
- If you have a garden, make sure that it is well maintained; the shrubs should be trimmed, and the lawn mowed.
- Ensure that the walkways, driveways, and porch are clean.
- Consider adding lights along the walkway and near the entrance.
- Apply a fresh coat of paint to your front porch floor. The paint should be neutral in color. Also, make sure to place new doormats on the front and back doorways.
2. Rid the Clutter
When you live in a home, you tend to fill it up with a lot of clutter- either for convenience or simply due to sentimental reasons. However, to buyers, the value of a piece of real estate is measured in dollars per square foot. Every foot of that property holds some value to buyers. Hence, decluttering is an essential part of the staging process.
You can start by packing away all the extra pieces of furniture that you do not use regularly. If you do not want to permanently get rid of these items, you can pack them up into labeled boxes and store them in a place that you’d normally not show to buyers.
3. Remove All Personal Attachments
Depersonalizing is the process of neutralizing your property to make it look as “brand new” as possible. You can do this by removing items of personal or sentimental value that give your home the “lived-in” impression and ultimately depreciate its value during a showing. These might include-
- Personal Items- These include family photos, children’s paintings, refrigerator art, and collection sets. It might be sad, but personal items represent your memories, and buyers will want to create their own.
- Room Paints and Wallpapers- These are highly subjective, and the chances are that the taste of most buyers would not align with yours. Reverting your wallpapers and room paints to a more neutral theme is always recommended- neither too flashy nor too bland.
Remember, selling a home is akin to selling a blank canvas rather than your painting. Try to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and consider what you might be expecting from a property that you wish to buy and stage accordingly.
4. Clean the Property
The cleanliness of a property is one of the first things most buyers check for during their personal visit. It is an easy parameter for buyers to judge whether or not you, as the owner, have taken good care of the property or not, without digging deeper. Thus, before accepting personal visit requests, use these tips to clean your property as thoroughly as you can:
- The Kitchen and The Dining Room – The kitchen and the dining room are often two of the dirtiest rooms in a household. Thus, ensure to get rid of the odd food stains on kitchen and dining floors, clean your appliances.
- The Bathroom – Presenting a clean and well-maintained bathroom to your buyers ensures them that you keep your property in line with the best sanitary and hygiene practices. Make sure that your bathroom floors, bathtubs, and sinks are cleaned and free from any offensive smell that might turn sellers away.
- Avail The Help of a Professional Cleaning Service- If you feel like your property is too untidy for a showing, you can avail the services of professional cleaning agencies. They will ensure that every corner of your property is cleaned, polished, and looking as “new” as possible.
5. Go with The Season
Home prices fluctuate year-round, subject to market conditions. For example, in Arizona, the winter months (especially January) are when real estate prices peak. The reason is that the buyers outnumber the number of real estate properties on sale in the market. Thus, to ensure a quick sale during the peak market conditions, you’ll need to stage your home according to the seasons.
If your house is slated to go on the market during the winters, make sure that your fire-pit is working, and the decor has a welcoming, warm undertone. Similarly, during the summers, make sure that your garden is well maintained and the patio well organized. You can also go one step further and add some potted plants in key areas of the property.
6. Ensure Proper Lighting
Proper lighting can accentuate the decor of your home and make it more welcoming for buyers. Apart from that, it can also create an illusion of spaciousness that can do wonders to maximize the property’s value.
You can do this by ensuring that all the windows, curtains, and shutter slats are open while showing your home to any potential seller.
If your home does not have adequate natural lighting, you can go ahead and install external lighting systems that match your decor. However, make sure that you don’t go overboard with your purchases since the entire point of staging is to make a profit.
Inexpensive but Highly Effective
The real estate market is competitive, and sellers constantly find new ways to gain the upper hand over their competitors. It includes heavy reliance on marketing, showings, and offering mortgage incentives to buyers.
However, if you wish to maximize your profits with minimal investment, you should pay attention to how you stage your home.
Have Questions? Ask The Lott Group
Your real estate agent is the best source of information about the local community and real estate topics. Give The Lott Group a call at 623-313-1158 to learn more about local areas, discuss selling a house, or tour available homes for sale.
