Home Staging Tips - An Article by Tracy Young
Home Staging Tips - An Article by Tracy Young
The art of Home Staging has become so popular now, yet it's just a new term for something people have been doing for many years - presenting their home in a way which maximize the selling price and gets it off the market faster.
So if you're selling a home and you want to get the most money possible and the fastest sale, I've rounded up 9 easy-to-implement home staging tips you can put into action to reap the rewards.
1. The outside of your home is probably the most important aspect when staging a home for sale. That's the trouble with first impressions - you only get to make one. If your prospective buyers see a clean, tidy, attractive property when they pull up in their car, everything else suddenly becomes much easier. But if they are disappointed, or disgusted buy the way the house looks, even if they decide to go in anyway, it's almost impossible for any interior to repair this kind of image damage.
2. Your kitchen is one of the most important places when someone is inspecting your home. Food is such a vital part of our culture, and people will find it easy to picture themselves spending time in your kitchen after buying your home. So make sure they can easily see in their minds a clean, uncluttered, organized, airy, light-filled, fresh kitchen area.
3. The backyard or any other outdoor areas are also important. It's always hard work to transform an average backyard into a showpiece, so making sure you keep it well maintained at all times will make things much easier on you than if you have to perform a miracle to get it ready.
4. Your bathroom is another high profile area in your buyers' minds. An old, unloved bathroom will have them thinking "renovations needed", along with the thousands of dollars they'll need to spend. But if your bathroom is just as light, airy and fresh as the kitchen, it'll go a long way to making the sale. Use mild scents, and try and arrange it in an open, airy design, rather than closed in and dark.
5. While you may be as proud as punch of cabinet full of your kids' trophies, and your walls lined with pictures of kids and grandkids, this is a common mistake when selling a home. It's a mind thing - your buyers want to imagine THEIR pictures on the wall, THEIR lives within your walls, and they can't do that if it's cluttered with YOUR stuff. Don't worry about it looking bare, that's just because you're used to the clutter.
6. It's important to make living areas open and uncluttered, don't partition off areas or even vaguely define areas with couches, etc. Make the most of all the space you have available - it's tough for your buyer to imagine their stuff in your home if it's all jammed in there or closed off.
7. Religious items, crosses, symbols, should be taken down when home staging if at all possible. It shouldn't, but it could make the difference between an offer on the day and a "We'll think about it". If you must leave something up, make it small and inconspicuous.
8. Have some up-to-date home-related books and magazines on your coffee table. Remember, your buyer is immersed in houses and homes, and the longer they stay, the more your place will grow on them. If they want to sit down and read something, put the kettle on!
9. If you have a fireplace, it's amazing how much this appeals to people, as long as it's clean and well maintained. You can talk about warm-as-toast winter nights spent with loved ones in front of the open fire, to really sell the dream. Make absolutely sure that nowhere in your home smells of smoke, not even near the fireplace.
That's 9 simple home staging tips that absolutely anyone can do in a relatively short time, to get the most out of their home. We haven't spent thousands of dollars, or needed weeks of back breaking work (unless your backyard is really bad), and you should expect to get a higher price for your home, even if just because nobody else is paying as much attention to all of these things.
But there is a 10th tip I can share, which is quite popular, yet it does require some capital - renovations. These might range from a few hundred bucks for minor repairs to tiling or tens of thousands for a new bathroom and kitchen.
But you can literally transform a home by installing a whole new kitchen and bathroom, and add tens of thousands of dollars to the selling price. My tenth tip is to seriously do your homework on what renovations you might need, and those you don't need. It's true that these renovations can add huge amounts of value to a property, but not always, if your bathroom is nice at the moment, a new one won't make much difference to the value.
Find out as much as you can, talk to and visit other people who have had it done, talk to the contractors, and if you decide to go ahead, make sure your contractors are reliable and have a reputation for good quality work and finishing on time.
Remember that most people just want to move in and immediately have a comfy, appealing home they can make their own. Home staging is all about arranging and presenting your home to appeal to as many people as possible. So do your homework and you could get thousands and thousands more for your home than you ever thought possible.
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