Before you put your house on the market, preparation and presentation is crucial to making a first good impression to potential buyers. In order to make your property stand out in today’s real estate market, one of the best proven methods to attract more buyers is a process known as staging. Staging involves applying design and bringing out the home’s best features so potential buyers can envision the property as their home. The objective is to make buyers emotionally connect to the space so they can visualize themselves moving in and living in the home. Properly staging your home can also help you sell your home faster and most certainly enhance your home’s value.
Home staging is effective because it emphasizes a property’s strengths and minimizes its weak points. It allows your home to be shown at its maximum potential. Presenting a well-cared and thoughtfully designed home will attract more attention to potential buyers and encourage them to consider how your property fits their needs and likings.
Below are the three steps of pre-staging prep to help you get started:
- Depersonalize – Remove personal items such as family photos and personal wall decor. Instead, hang prints that have generic scenic landscapes to create a neutral space. Help other people connect with the house by disconnecting yourself from it.
- Declutter – Put away everything that is not essential to your daily life. Remove appliances from counters, clear books from shelves, pack your clothes from the closet, etc. Put excess clutter into a storage unit so that buyers can get a sense of the storage space in the house.
- Deep Clean – Clean your house from inside out so that the entire space is spotless. All floors, carpets, windows, counter tops and flat surfaces should be sparkling clean and dust-free. This includes interior doors, closet shelving, stairs, bathroom cabinets, tubs, toilets, kitchen cabinets, appliances, shutters, exterior railings, etc)
Once decluttering and deep cleaning is complete, the real work of staging begins with the following:
- Improve Curb Appeal – The first impression starts with the home’s exterior when buyers first set eyes on the property. Remove debris and cut back overgrown grass, trees and bushes. Update fresh paint on the front door and incorporate new plants and flowers to enhance the overall view of the landscape.
- Rearrange or Remove Furniture – A proper furniture layout will create a good flow that is welcoming and inviting. Oversized furniture can make a room feel smaller than it really is. Removing large and bulky pieces of furniture will make your house appear more spacious and more appealing. Rearranging pieces of furniture will give purpose to each room and living space.
- Freshen Up with Neutral Colors – Tone down any bold color choices and paint your walls in a neutral and lighter color to make the rooms in your house more palatable for potential buyers. Repainting is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to improve the entire look and feel of your home.
- Increase Light – Good lighting creates an important first impression. Adding decorative table lamps can elevate dark corners, incorporating decorative mirrors can help reflect light in dark spaces. Replacing any burned-out lightbulbs and swap for higher wattage bulbs to maximize light in the house.
- Update the Kitchen – The kitchen is the heart of the home and can make or break a buyer’s overall opinion of your home. If your kitchen is outdated, freshening old cabinets with a new coat of paint and replacing cabinet hardware are a few of the inexpensive ways to upgrade the look of the kitchen.
How you present your home truly makes a difference to buyers, starting from staging and then presenting it virtually through professional photography. An empty home can seem sterile and empty spaces often lack imagination. My team of professional stagers will work with you to determine the level of staging that is needed to best show off your home within your budget. We will plan and design how to stage your home, bring in furniture, decor and accessories needed to elevate the overall appearance of your home in order to target more potential buyers and get your house sold in the shortest amount of time. Although not all sellers can afford the cost of staging, we will work our best to accommodate your needs and find a suitable solution together to get your home on the market for the best value possible.