As the U.S. real estate market starts to cool, homeowners need to put in a little more effort if they want their homes to sell quickly.
According to the NAR Profile of Home Staging, 82% of buyer’s agents reported that home staging has a positive impact on potential buyers.
If your home’s taking longer to sell than you’d like, home staging might be a step in the right direction for you. Keep reading to find out what’s involved and how you can stage your home effectively for a quicker sale.
What Is Home Staging?
Home staging refers to eh process of preparing all types of homes for sale. It’s designed to highlight the best properties of the house, help buyers visualize living there, and sell the home faster for the best possible price.
Not all sellers go to the trouble and expense of staging their homes, so it can give you an advantage over other properties in your area.
You won’t sell your home as quickly as when you get a house cash offer, but effective staging can give potential buyers that final push they need to make an offer.
When buyers start looking at homes, they aren’t just looking for somewhere to stay. They’re investing in their future lifestyle.
Clever staging can reveal your home’s potential to provide them with the brighter future they’re envisioning. While caught up in these imaginings, it’s easier for them to overlook or forgive any small problems they encounter while viewing the house.
Selling a home involves a lot of money, so if you can push your price up even by a small percentage using staging, it’s well worth it. In this regard, the costs associated with home staging are a good investment, yielding a high return.
How To Stage Your Home Effectively
You don’t need to stage every inch of your home to impress buyers. The above NAR survey shows that living rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, and the main bedroom are most important to potential buyers. So, you can focus your attention and efforts on those rooms.
These are the steps for staging your home effectively:
Clean and Declutter
A dirty home immediately creates a negative impression, make sure yours is spotless when buyers arrive.
Spring clean every part of the house, make sure your bathrooms are sparkling and scrub old appliances so they look as good as new.
This creates the impression that you’ve taken good care of the property while you’ve been there, removes musty smells, and makes your home more appealing overall.
While you’re cleaning, get rid of the clutter. Clutter creates visual noise that detracts from your home’s good features and makes it appear cramped.
Pack everything you don’t need every day into a box and place it in storage, including unseasonal clothing and linen. You aim to create the neat, slick effect you’ll see in interior design photographs.
Depersonalize Your Spaces
You want buyers to envision themselves in your home, and it’s difficult to do that with great Aunt Bertha’s visage glowering down at them from the wall.
Pack away your family photos, travel mementos, awards, and other treasures you’ve collected over the year. You want buyers to view your home as a blank canvas for their future memories, and not feel guilty about kicking your five-year-old out of their room.
Refresh Your Rooms
Things like linen and wallpaper are highly personalized choices. As far as possible try to neutralize these.
Remove your wallpaper and paint the walls in a neutral shade, and tone down the soft furnishings in every room. If your home has ugly floors or carpet, consider replacing them with modern laminated wood flooring, or hide the evils with a large neutral rug.
Go through your home with a critical eye and patch up any hairline cracks in walls, repaint stained walls, and clean or replace light switch covers.
Consider adding a few potted plants to add a little life to your rooms, but be sure to keep them looking their best. Dead, droopy plants never impressed anyone.
Freshen Up
Once you’ve completed the major spruce-up, you can simply freshen things up a little each time someone comes to view your home.
Get rid of pet and kitchen odors by burning scented candles or using a room freshener spray made of essential oils mixed with water, or baking cinnamon-sprinkled apples in the oven.
Wipe the kitchen sink with lemon and then grind the fruit in your garbage disposal to remove extra sink odors. If you’re a smoker, avoid smoking inside from the moment you decide to sell your home.
Fresh flowers are a nice touch to freshen up your room’s appearance and smell, too.
Remember, to wash all the dishes and pack them away, make the beds, and give everything a final wipe down before your potential buyers arrive.
Curb Appeal
Although home staging centers on the interior of your home, it doesn’t hurt to spruce up your garden in the process. Mow the lawns, weed the flower beds, and trim the edges.
Your yard is the first thing visitors to your home will see, and it’s important to make a good impression from the start.
More Advice for the Smart Homeowner
You’ll find plenty of inspiration for home staging online, in design magazines, and on real estate shows.
If you’re hesitant to try mastering the intricacies of home staging on your own, you can hire a professional to do it for you. Home stagers don’t come cheap, but their expert touch can add immeasurable appeal to your home.
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