Staging your home before listing it for sale can help draw in potential buyers and fetch top dollar for your property, but this process can be time consuming and costly.
There are some easy and cost-effective strategies for making your home more appealing to potential buyers!
1. Remove Clutter
Home staging involves making your property more appealing to as wide a range of potential buyers as possible, usually through rearranging or renting furniture; cleaning and scrubbing down kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms and other spaces; using light to increase space and remove personal touches like photos or monogrammed towels. A professional home stager can assist a homeowner by prioritizing tasks; seeing the home through buyer eyes; emphasizing its best features while concealing or softening flaws; taking high-resolution photos that look great online listings; as well as taking high-resolution photographs that will look amazing when listing online listings go live.
Clean off counters and tabletops of clutter as an easy staging tip. Many homeowners employ an 80/20 rule when getting their homes ready for showings: keep what you love, donate or dispose of what doesn’t. Taking this extra step can really add value to your staging efforts, especially in higher impact rooms such as living rooms and master bedrooms; adding flowers or decorative items will only further make these spaces inviting for showings.
2. Paint the Walls
Home staging doesn’t have to be costly or time consuming; painting the walls is a simple yet effective way to help a property show well. Plus, painting offers the perfect chance to address any signs that your house hasn’t been maintained; use a melamine foam eraser pad to smooth over scuffs and small scratches or spackle and repaint those affected areas as needed.
Choose neutral paint colors that won’t date and meet buyers’ preferences, such as light shades that match up well with countertops and tile in kitchens and bathrooms.
If your ceilings are high, painting them with darker tones will visually open up the room and give it more dimension. A fresh coat of white, pale gray or soft blue can also help make it seem larger.
3. Rearrange Furniture
Staging can help increase a real estate listing’s selling price and shorten its time on the market, yet homeowners may not have enough funds available to them to hire professional stagers.
Staging involves rearrange furniture to highlight features of a space and make it appear larger; but also involves considerable decluttering and removal of personal items from storage.
Potential buyers need to be able to imagine themselves living in your living room, so it is crucial to remove clutter from countertops and tabletops, avoid pushing furniture against walls that creates an impersonal feel in a room, and remove clutter that’s on countertops and tabletops.
To save money when staging your home, consider shopping thrift stores or second-hand shops, Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace are also great sources for finding high-end decor pieces at a fraction of their original retail cost. Repurposing current furniture by rearrangement could also save money – for instance a book shelf could become a display case for vases and small sculptures instead of books.
4. Clean the Kitchen
Staging properties is designed to highlight its best features, making them more appealing to buyers. A kitchen is one area in particular where this can make all the difference: dirty dishes or piles of mail will immediately detract from its appeal and should therefore remain tidy throughout its selling process.
Real estate agents recommend clearing countertops and tabletops of clutter as one staging tip for their listings. A vase of flowers or bowl of potpourri may add some decoration, but too many items on a surface could overwhelm potential buyers.
Staging can be time-consuming and expensive, but it can help your home sell faster and for more money. By adding fresh paint, organizing drawers, and removing personal items from sight, staging will make your house more desirable to potential buyers. You could hire a staging company or DIY the process yourself.