How to Stage Your Home for a Successful Sale
For most people, a private home is typically the biggest-ticket item they will ever sell. As such, this makes marketing your home serious business. Every aspect of selling your home requires special effort and attention. Home staging is a vital part of this process because it is instrumental in attracting buyers and closing sales. Although the staging process may seem challenging, it can be done without major hassles and high costs. The key to successful staging is in the details.
written by Alice Robertson of TidyHome.info
Who’s Your Audience?
A major factor to consider in the staging process is identifying your audience. To do this, you will have to do some investigating. As a way of assessing your competition, you can browse through local listings of homes within your selling price range. By observing the language they use and their presentation, you can get some idea of the type of buyers they are trying to attract, and learn about how competitive the local market is. For example, Palo Alto is a very competitive market, with homes selling for an average of four percent above their listing price. Learn what’s selling, what works, and what doesn’t to get a better feel for things, and let that shape how you proceed.
You may be able to get a better impression by visiting a couple of open houses. A lot can be learned by having a first-hand view of how other homeowners approach decluttering, depersonalizing, and staging their homes. And as Framework points out, visiting open houses is an opportunity to shape your own house-hunting criteria. There is much to glean from seeing things in person.
Decluttering
Clarity is important to the senses, and you can’t stage effectively without it. For this reason, you must clear your home of any items that create a mess or confusion. All nonessential possessions should be removed from your living space. This includes items that do not complement your home. These items would include items in mismatched styles, old appliances, dated window treatments, and worn couches. If it has been awhile since your last spring cleaning, it’s a good idea to have a lot of storage boxes on hand.
Depersonalizing
As Home City explains, depersonalizing is a crucial aspect of home staging. This is simply the process of clearing your home of all items that have a personal reference to you and your individual tastes. Consequently, wall decorations with your alma mater’s name on them must go, and skateboard ramps must vanish. Even art and craft collections can interfere with the buyers’ experience.
The Setup
While staging your home, be aware that you are preparing it to be viewed through in-person visits and online. For this reason, coordinating your props in relation to each area’s lighting and space is very important, as you want things to feel bright and open. Also, stick to neutral colors to create a pleasing flow from room to room. At the same time, each room should have its own identity. You can arrange items and furniture with the dominant activity for each room in mind. For instance, the bed should take center stage in the bedroom.
There are several little tricks that you can employ. For example, Apartment Therapy explains you can use a technique call “floating.” This method makes your living space look bigger by positioning furniture away from the walls. Similarly, it is best not to have furniture jammed up next to each other. You want the arrangement to offer freedom of movement, or else the room will feel small. Another effective staging technique is to use mirrors. Along with serving as neutral wall art, mirrors can make a room look brighter and less cramped.
The home staging process could be what helps sell your home for the best price possible. If you dedicate the proper amount of time and attention to the details of your staging, your entire home-selling efforts will benefit without much trouble and money spent. When your home is such a major investment, it’s worth it to go the extra mile.
Photo Credit: Pexel.com