subject: How To Fail Miserably At Home Staging [print this page] If you want to shape up your house and style it up a bit so that it becomes more tempting to prospective buyers, then you should know that this is exactly what home staging does. To make sure that you get as many visitors as possible to become interested in your house, you need to home stage it so that the off-putting features of the house are shadowed by the more appealing and valuable features.
If you want to fail miserably at home staging and turn off prospective buyers very quickly, here's what you should do:
Abstain from gardening for a month or so. There's nothing more enjoyable than weeds sprouting everywhere and lawns you can actually hide in.
Your house should look like it's gone through a recent war, so don't repair anything and let the visitors think it's about to fall on their heads.
Cleaning should not be a word in your vocabulary these days. The dust on your furniture should be at least two inches high and when your buyers tread on your gray carpets, make sure to tell them they were white once. And don't forget to welcome them into the kitchen with stacks of dirty dishes and heaps of leftovers.
Make sure that once your visitors have seen a room they won't want to see the others. All rooms should be pitch-dark if possible. This way the sale of your home will be as good as dead.
Pets are a wonderful client-inhibitor so make sure your house is overcrowded with them and their litter trays, and if you don't have them, borrow from a pet-shelter.
Stinky, sleazy bathrooms are a favorite with potential clients. Leave the ring round the bath and the mildew in the shower - at least it adds some color!
The week before the showing try to make friends with cigars and cigarettes and don't air up the house. And no sane person wants to inhale fresh air.
Turn your house into a bug heaven. People just go crazy for a bug-infested house, so don't waste any time in filling it. Organize an open-doors day for the pesky little creatures and lure them in with refreshments.
Bring on the freeze Tell them you can't afford to turn the heat on! But if it's hot as an oven outside, turn the thing full on and give your visitors a taste of hell.
Follow the show day visitors, everywhere You need to keep a close watch on your visitors every second of their tour and while you keep them from nosing into your cupboards and cabinets, entertain them with an endless account of your spiteful neighbors and the beasts they keep as pets.
The probabilities of never selling your house will skyrocket, provided you respect the above instructions to the letter. For the greatest part home staging relies much on having some mother wit about you. A home that is clean and tidy, that doesn't smell like yesterday's trash will attract a lot more clients, so if selling your home is your wish, try to disregard all of the above.
