5 Staging Tips to Impress and Sell Your Home Fast
To sell your home fast, you have to stand out among the crowd. Having a great home isn’t enough. It has to look and feel perfect when people tour it. Bottom line: proper staging of your home can lead to a quicker sale. Here’s how to do it.
- Take down those family photos
It’s not so much that a photo or two of you and your family will turn off prospective buyers. It’s more that for a buyer to want to make a quick offer, they really need to be able to envision themselves living in the home as soon as possible. Having too many personal effects hanging around hampers this vision. So take down your personal photos. Anything that could be seen as inflammatory like strong religious or political decor must go too. Realtor.com suggests filling these now-empty spaces on your walls with mirrors. - Go gender-neutral
You’ll be hosting all types of people in all types of life situations at your open house – single men, single women, families, families with kids, etc. It’s vital that your decor – most importantly that in the bedrooms – stay gender-neutral. Think neutral paint colors like white, brown, and gray. Your decor shouldn’t seem too masculine or too feminine. For more on balancing the sexes in your decor, check here. - White = clean
Though white furniture and carpeting will show dirt, when it comes to your bathrooms and kitchen – think white. White is associated with cleanliness and sterility, and if you paint your bathrooms white and install white tile and fixtures, it will make prospective buyers feel like they are in a super-clean area. Of course, you also have to deep clean for real. A coat of paint can’t hide true grime. - Make your pets disappear
It’s obvious that you should get you dogs/cats out of the house before you show it. But just because Felix and Fido are gone, it doesn’t mean their presence isn’t noticeable. Proper staging of your home should include a complete and total eradication of all things pet (or at least as much as possible). Pet odor is hard to get out, but shampooing carpets/furniture and spot-treating can help. Try some of these tricks as well.Beyond worrying about odor, you should remove any other traces of their existence – bowls, leashes, toys, food, etc. You love your pets, but to a potential homebuyer they can be a huge turn-off.
- Focus on curb appeal
A spectacular interior will rarely make up for a shabby exterior. Would you be excited about making a quick, fair offer on a home with a drab or dilapidated front facade? Curb appeal is just as important – if not more so – as any other aspect of home staging. Through a combination of deep cleaning, landscaping, and painting, you can make that first impression shine. Houzz suggests these tasks to make your exterior pop: “power wash siding and walkways; hang easy-to-read house numbers; plant blooming flowers and fresh greenery; add fresh sod as needed; wash front windows; repaint or stain the porch floor.”
Staging your home to better elicit a quick offer isn’t some sort of trickery. It’s simply presenting your home in the best light possible – showing prospective buyers your home at its full potential. If your home is nice and solid, it will sell eventually. But if you don’t want it to sit around on the market for months, you should focus on making a huge splash at your open house.
Suzie Wilson ⎸info@happierhome.net ⎸Happier Home
Suzie Wilson is an interior designer with more than 20 years experience. What started as a hobby (and often, a favor to friends) turned into a passion for creating soothing spaces in homes of every size and style. While her goal always includes making homes look beautiful, her true focus is on fashioning them into serene, stress-free environments that inspire tranquility in all who enter. The Ultimate Guide to Prepping Your Home for an Open House is filled with tips, tricks and other advice based on Suzie’s years of experience in interior home design that will set you up for success.
Photo by Naomi Hébert on Unsplash
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