Staging Your Home: 5 Tips For Successful Home Sales

Staging a home enables buyers to envision themselves living in your space. For some sellers, staging means hiring a company to come in, redecorate the entire home, and place fresh, new furniture in every room. For others, staging rearranging furniture, repainting, and doing other economically prudent tricks. Home staging, regardless of how the seller goes about it, will give the seller an edge in competitive markets like Dilworth Mountain. When selling your home, keep these staging tips in mind.

Boost Curb Appeal

As the saying goes, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." From the moment a potential buyer walks up the driveway, they are forming an opinion of your home based on the curb appeal that has been prepared. Does the home seem inviting? Well cared for? Tired? Worn out? A little elbow grease and old-fashioned manual labour can go a long way to making a positive first impression on a buyer and improving curb appeal. Tips include:

• Power washing the siding or brick to remove any traces of dirt or mildew.
• Cleaning all the exterior windows so they sparkle.
• Freshening up the flower beds and landscaping with new mulch.
• Scraping and painting any trim or feature that looks faded or is peeling.
• Banishing all cobwebs and dirt from the porch, doorways, and fixtures.
• Removing any dead landscaping and replacing it with new plant life.
• Hiring a professional maid service for day-to-day or weekly cleaning. 

While you do not have to hire a professional landscaper to get the job done, some basic exterior maintenance is necessary in order to make the best impression possible.

Clean Up Your Act

Cleaning a home for sale is more than just hiding the laundry and picking up your shoes. Every corner of the home should sparkle, including kitchen countertops, bathroom grout, and the remotest corners of the basement. When viewing a home, you can believe that buyers are going to look in every closet and open every kitchen drawer. You want to convey a sense of organization and cleanliness no matter where they look. So, clean out those closets and break out the bleach. If bathrooms aren't your specialty, you might consider hiring a professional cleaning service. Most have very reasonable rates for one-time deep cleanings that can save you time and sell your home faster.

Embrace the Neutral

You may love the wild shade of red in your dining room or really dig the zebra print wallpaper in your bedroom, but a potential buyer will not. Unless they share your exact sense of style, they will look at your decorating choices and simply see work that needs to be done. Soothing shades of white and pale gray make spaces seem clean, bright, and spacious rather than wild and distracting.

Give Every Room a Purpose

You know that weird back room that you've been using a storage closet? Now is the time to define it. Every room must have a clear purpose when the buyer sees it. Maybe you are using the formal dining room as a home office or the laundry room as a closet because it suits your current needs. This simply confuses buyers. If it is a laundry room, clean it out and up, and make it the cutest laundry room ever. Even if you don't need that formal dining room, get your computer equipment out of there and set the table for dinner with your best dishes and table linens.

Remember: It's Not About You

The aim of staging a home is to make it appealing to as many people as possible. This means taking away any personal touches that might alienate potential buyers or prevent them from seeing themselves living in the space. Personal photos or mementos are part of what makes a house feel homey, but they also clearly mark the home as yours, not a place that a buyer can make theirs. Avoid potentially polarizing decor, such as items with religious or political connotations. When selling a home with pets, have a place for pets to go during showings and deep-clean to get rid of lingering smells and pet hair.

By taking away these personal touches, you're helping potential buyers see your home as a blank canvas where they can envision themselves living.

Prepare Your Home For a Successful Sale with Home Staging

While these tips are generally applicable to most homes, every home is unique. An experienced real estate agent can help guide you in making the best staging decisions for your home.