Attracting the eyes of a willing buyer and sealing the deal often relies on how a home is staged. Selling your home quickly relies on its ability to present value. The key for how to stage a home to sell is making the property as enticing as possible. If the staged home doesn’t immediately communicate its beauty, you’ll have a much harder time to sell the home.
Are you looking for tips on how to stage a home to sell? Here are the fourteen best practices when you need to stage and sell a home:
1. Clean and declutter the home
The most obvious strategy in how to sell a home is to clean up. Every inch of the home should be cleaned and readied for prospective buyers. Clean up, put old furniture in storage outside the home, and deep-clean everything so that it sparkles.
2. Deodorize and eliminate odors
Unpleasant odors – a la mildew, food particles in the sink, pets, or a smelly garbage can – is a major turn-off when you stage a home to sell. Be aware of where these smells are coming from and eliminate them at the source.
Next on the list is to use a deodorizer of some kind, like an essential oil, cinnamon sticks, or even baking cookies can give a property a real home-esque atmosphere.
3. New linens and bath towels
Some things you just aren’t going to be able to get to feel like new. Your bath towels, linens, kitchen towels, bedding, and linens all need a replacement. This isn’t expensive, thankfully, and it can make the world of difference in how attracting your bathroom and bedroom look to buyers.
4. Consider renting furniture
A common way that realtors stage a home to sell quickly is by moving out old furniture and replacing them with furniture rental for home staging. Arranging furniture should be done to create the most space throughout a room while emphasizing the best aspects of the location.
5. Pulls and knobs
Look around your kitchen, bedroom, and around the house for broken fixtures or missing pulls, knobs, or switches. These are inexpensive to replace and can make a cabinet or furniture feel completely new. It’s a simple enough trick that can help you to stage a home to sell.
6. Depersonalize every room
Take away your family valuables and personal mementos from the living room, kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms. The psychology behind depersonalizing a home is that it gives a buyer the chance to see themselves living in the house.
When you stage a home to sell, it’s unrealistic to think buyers would have monuments of previous ownership laying around. Remove your items and allow them to visualize themselves using the space.
7. Repainting the home
The subject of repainting to stage a home to sell is an undecided subject, with some arguing it’s not needed. For the real estate agents who mean business, if your home looks like it needs some dressing up, a new coat of neutral color paint helps.
8. Strategic lighting
Emphasize the most beautiful architectural elements of your home. Improve lighting in areas where natural light doesn’t reach. This is the most essential aspect of how to stage a home to sell.
When you stage a home to sell, make the rooms as bright as possible but do so as naturally as possible. Make them feel happy, big, and clean, and use lighting to do it.
9. Remove your pets
Any evidence of pets should be completely removed when you stage a home to sell. Some buyers are bound to be afraid of them or allergic. There’s also the belief that pets have unpleasant smells to them. This will only add to any perception of your property being cluttered and disorderly.
10. Curb appeal
Buyers register a first impression before they get out of the car just by looking at the outside of a property. For this reason be sure to have the lawn mowed, weeds removed, flowers planted, windows cleaned, power-wash those walkways, and add anything else that may make your home welcoming to guests.
11. Strategically placed plants
Plants are great when you need to stage a home to sell. You don’t want to bury a staged home in plants, but living plants add a sense of freshness, aliveness, and activity you want. A single plant on the bathroom shelf or a couple small plants inside the kitchen add to the lived-in feel of a space. They also give a sense of natural beauty you can’t find anywhere else.
12. Neutrality
If you have anything controversial or which would stigmatize your household, remove it. Look at your space and consider what a buyer may think. Neutralize everything. Use neutral colors, artwork that is very standard and neutral, and remove anything relating to gender, ethnic, political, social, or sexual identity from the mix.
13. A styled dining room table
In how to stage a home to sell, you know your buyer’s going to be coming to the kitchen. The countertops should be clean and appliances looking their best but also, invest the time to style up your dining table. Get a base and a flower arrangement, or some fruit. Make it look dazzlingly welcoming to family and friends.
14. Use any extra rooms
In every house, there tends to be at least one extra room that’s sort of a ‘junk room’ or guest bedroom. If you have a room without a unified theme, make a change. In staged real estate, every room has a reason to be. With this in mind, you can turn extra rooms into things like a play room for kids or even a home office.
