Home staging is the art of preparing your home to be presented before buyers in the most appealing light. Whereas decorating might be considered what you do to make your home most comfortable, home staging is geared towards turning your home into a marketable piece of merchandise. Statistically, when home staging is done right, it will sell a property faster and for a premium. There are many home staging companies available for hire, but if you're determined to approach home staging yourself, to be your own "director", this article includes some key DIY tips.
The big, broad philosophy behind homestaging is to maximize your home's features, while minimizing its flaws. Other key points involve cleanliness, de-personalization and de-clutter, so that potential buyers are invited to easily imagine themselves ( not you, your dog and husband) living in your home.
Take one, is all about the first impression. Your home must make a positive impact on a buyer, and you want to draw them in from start to finish. For prospective buyers, impressions begin as soon as they drive up your driveway. So, you'll need to focus on your home's curb appeal and at the very least, tidy up the outside of your house. This means cleaning up the yard, raking leaves, weeding, shoveling snow, sweeping driveways and porches. You should also completely de-clutter your driveway. Even though this may be your own personal light industrial zone, potential buyers don't want to see items blocking a neutral view of the home, and all it's spaces. Spaciousness is appealing, and buyers want to be free to imagine how they might use free spaces.
Other to-dos for the exterior of your home include power washing decks and the outside of your home and removing all bottles, garbage and recycling before viewings. Painting your front door an inviting color and accenting the entranceway with potted plants will add to the curb appeal of your home.
Along these lines, it's important to de-clutter the interior of your home. This may mean having to rent a storage locker as you purge closets and cupboards. Just when you think you've edited out enough "'you'ness", try editing out some more. Take books off shelves, remove all personal photos or trophies, reduce the numbers of exposed CDs or DVD's and, fridge magnets, be gone!
Continuing along the lines of paring down, another way to open up space in your home and to create a more appealing and buyer friendly atmosphere is to remove extraneous furniture. Now, although it may not seem extraneous to you, all those extra chairs you have hanging around, and any "extra" things all need to go into storage. Likewise, if the furniture you do have is dated or out of sync with a cohesive sense of suitable decor, you might consider packing it up and renting a few modern, stylish pieces or borrowing a couple of well-chosen pieces of wall art.
Wage war on grime and dirt and smells! Whatever your personal standards of cleanliness, you'll want to up the anti and scrub even the unnoticed nooks and crannies that you might normally not bother with. Consider hiring a professional cleaning service if you don't have the time or energy to do this. If you're a smoker and tend to smoke inside, you'll want to make a concerted effort to keep your smoking outside for at least a month before you sell. Likewise, you'll want to have a plan of attack in terms of combating any existing smells and stains. Painting walls with a stain blocking primer can do wonders to remove stains and smells, and the right color choice can boost the value and appeal of a room.
Drippy faucets, cracked tiles or moldy caulking around that bathtub can knock thousands off your home's price tag. These are projects you can can do yourself or hire a handyman to do. Don't overlook these small details as they all add up to create the larger picture impression of your home.
Once you've rubbed and scrubbed and made your home, not your home anymore, you can go back in and add some fine touches of humanity, creativity and flair. Although a buyer doesn't want clutter, a totally dead living space won't appeal to their homing instinct either. Well appointed plants and flowers can bring a great sense of life and freshness to a space. Consider placing some beautiful fresh cut flowers in an attractive vase.
Attending to these sorts of details as you clean, de-clutter, re-organize and re-fresh your living space, can have a huge pay off when it comes to selling your home.
