Staging a property can do wonders to improve the way your home shows. There are, however, different levels of staging. Those interested in diving right in can engage a staging professional to overhaul their existing furnishings and replace some items with rented pieces. Though the rewards can be well worth it for certain kinds of property, beware that staging can be very expensive and inconvenient, as you’ll have to live with rented furniture until your home sells.
Here are a few simple things you can do to have your home show better, from basic staging to cleaning more effectively.
1. Let In The Light
The amount of light available in your home can make a huge impact on salability. I always advise buyers to leave on all lights, if possible, for a showing. A lazy agent may not go through the home and turn on lights before showing it. If the buyer is seeing the property on a dull day, this may mean that your home shows poorly.
Part of letting the light in is also keeping your blinds and curtains all the way up or open. Let the daylight pour in to show off your home’s good side.
2. Remove Surface Grime
So, you know there’s a showing. Chances are you’ve done your dishes, vacuumed your floor and wiped surfaces, but did you remember to clean where a buyer and their agent will look? Consider this: They will engage with your light switches and railings. While turning off lights, they will also bend over lamps and see how much dust has accumulated on bulbs. To give off the impression that your home is well cared for, consider doing a final clean of just a few items: your doorknobs, light switches, main staircase railings and bulbs inside lamps. It's probable these spots aren’t routinely cleaned in your home and could use a good wipe.
3. Remove Personal Items
In an ideal showing, prospective buyers can envision themselves calling your house “home.” To help bring this seller’s vision to life, minimize your own presence in the home. One of the goals of home staging is to place generic furnishings in homes and strip them of clutter and personal belongings. There is much that you can do to accomplish this yourself, even without a staging professional.
First, walk through your home as objectively as possible. Imagine it’s your first time there. What do you see? Who are these people living here? When we live in a home we want it to feel like ours, but when selling a home, we don’t.
One surefire way to depersonalize a home is to remove personal photos. Eliminating the beautiful photo of your daughter graduating, or your wedding, may help prospective buyers imagine celebrating those milestones themselves as the next owners of your home.
4. Invest In Fresh Bedding
Bedding is very personal. Some like patterned sets; others prefer those with color. Still others mix and match. Along the theme of depersonalizing, neutralizing your bedroom will help provide a blank canvas for a prospective buyer. You want the buyer to walk in and observe the details of the home: its moldings, the flooring and the light fixtures. If the buyer is instead focused on a loud bedding print, they may be distracted from the home itself.
Purchasing an inexpensive set of white bedding can go a long way in neutralizing a room. It photographs crisply, doesn’t distract and creates a luxurious, hotel-like bed display. This stager’s trick calls for a fluffy duvet, white duvet cover and four pillows covered in white European pillow shams (the large square ones). For extra fluff, consider padding the duvet cover with not one, but two duvets.
5. Keep Your Counters Bare
When buyers view your home, the fewer contents the eye encounters, the better. In fact, I even advocate for certain properties to be shown vacant rather than with furnishings.
If you’re living in the home, I would suggest as much decluttering as possible. If you can show your home with your kitchen and bathroom counters almost bare, it will serve you well.
When buyers see appliances out, they may think you don’t have enough storage space. What started out as you seeking convenience by leaving your toaster out might then turn into a perceived negative of your property.
6. Make Your Property Easy To Show
It is definitely inconvenient to have your home listed. Constantly preparing for showings, having to be out of the house when you just want to have a bath or a nap and coming home to find lights were left on all day are some of the negatives. Many clients try to sidestep these obstacles by imposing rigid showing windows and giving a long list of showing instructions. Of course, you may need your garage door to be left unlocked or your lights to be turned off, but be aware that these things do happen, even if your agent specifically requests the adherence to certain protocols.
One way you can position your home above the rest is to make it available to show on short notice. If you leave town, leave your home showing-ready. When you depart for work in the morning, do a quick tidy before you go.
Sometimes clients think that a buyer will surely reschedule if the seller cannot accommodate a showing time. But this is not necessarily the case. Perhaps the buyer is able to access another property instead and falls in love with it. Or, they may be going out of town and lose interest. Being ready to show is one way to avoid falling into the buyer-moved-on pitfall.
These six easy staging tricks will not only make your home easier to show, but will also help improve your showings.
