Prepping your home for sale - Staging - A Realtor's hand picked suggestions
I went through a few websites to hand-pick some tips for you and as expected the main elements of staging are to de-clutter and minimalist look. If you are already there, I will not have a LOT to say :)
Flowers, candles, new throw pillows, blankets. Minimal art pieces and neutral. Here is a page I was impressed with the content and the visuals that will give some insight to modern design elements.
Styling tips for selling your home
Selling Secret: Light it up
Maximize the light in your home. After location, good light is the one thing that every buyer cites that they want in a home. Take down the drapes, clean the windows, change the lampshades, increase the wattage of your light bulbs and cut the bushes outside to let in sunshine. Do what you have to do make your house bright and cheery – it will make it more sellable.
Tips for Staging
If you’re thinking about having your home staged, here are a few tips for getting it done right:
- Do a deep clean. The last thing you want is for grimy baseboards and dirty bathrooms to detract from a beautiful staging job. Before you move in the staging items, have your home deep cleaned so that it’s move-in ready. You might want to hire a professional cleaning service to handle this step.
- Do a smell test. People easily get used to the smell of their own home and don’t notice a difference until they’ve left the house for a while and walk back in and sometimes, something smells off. This can be a deterrent to a prospective homebuyer walking in for the first time. It’s also why real estate agents will bake cookies or use cookie-scented candles when staging empty homes, to make it feel more homely.
- Choose one or two key rooms. Staging an entire house can get expensive, especially if you end up renting furniture for a few months. But you don’t necessarily need to stage every room. Instead, focus on a couple of key rooms, such as the living room and kitchen, so prospective buyers can get a sense of what it would be like to live there.
- Stage according to budget and lifestyle. If you’re selling a cozy beach cottage, it wouldn’t make sense to stage it with luxury leather furniture and expensive art pieces. Similarly, if you’re trying to sell a modern condo near downtown, a shabby-chic look probably isn’t going to inspire buyers. Think about the general budget of prospective buyers and what their ideal living space would look like.
- Keep it minimal. You don’t need to fully furnish rooms as you would if someone were actually going to be living there. Instead, you want to provide the property with a certain aesthetic and general feel of hominess. Keep the number of items in each room to a minimum, and place them away from walls. Decorate the walls and shelves sparingly. If you do paint the walls, use light, simple colors to help open up the space.
Focus on Fresh
A few potted plants can do wonders to make your home feel fresh and inviting. If you have a lot of plants, space them out strategically so they don’t overwhelm any one area (unless you have a greenhouse). Of course, dead and dying plants don’t do much to make your home look well tended.
Final Touches
Put fresh flowers in vases, let fresh air into the house for at least 10 minutes beforehand so it isn’t stuffy, light a few candles (soft and subtle fragrances only), and put new, plush towels in the bathrooms.
- SC