Staging Your Home For Sale

We’re pretty attached to our stuff, aren’t we? Family photos, knick-knacks, and artwork—they reflect our personalities and styles. However, those might be a problem if you’re showing your home to potential buyers. They want to imagine themselves living in a beautiful, clean space, and that means properly staging a house for sale.

You can hire a professional stager, but here are six things a professional stager would likely do to maximize your home’s full potential and we think you can do these yourself to help prepare your home to appeal to the greatest number of buyers. The goal when staging a home for sale, either in-person or virtually, is to package it so buyers feel compelled to make an offer to purchase it.

When a potential buyer walks into your home, they feel the vibes during the first few minutes. If your home is cluttered, they’ll want to leave. Many homeowners think staging is decorating, but it’s not. Decorating is about your personal style – the colours and objects you love. Staging is about the function of your home and attracting the largest pool of buyers.

1. Purge clutter

Taking the time to prepare your home by staging it  can help a property sell faster and for a higher price. You can’t sell a house if you can’t see it, so pack up as much personal stuff as you can.

2. Move your furniture around to improve flow

When you live in your home, you get used to squeezing alongside your furniture to get by, but to an outsider, that room looks small and cramped.  

Look objectively at every space and reposition, remove, or add furniture to improve flow and aesthetics.

Find new uses for things. For example, if there are no night tables beside a bed, use two garden stools, small cabinets or small end tables, and put a lamp on them so the room looks finished.

3. Neutralize your colour palette

You may love powerful punches of colour, but that may turn buyers off. Paint the walls a softer hue to brighten and enlarge a space.

Clean, freshly painted neutral walls make the home look like it’s move-in condition.

4. Box up all your trinkets

You may have spent years scouring flea markets for vintage teapots, but if a potential buyer isn’t also a teapot collector, they may not appreciate seeing them in a staged home.

Remove shelves of figurines or antique dolls, to leave some empty space. Collections can look cluttered and be distracting for buyers.

5. Upgrade your bedding

Nothing freshens up a bedroom like a crisp set of new sheets, a fluffy duvet and some attractive pillows.

Make sure the bedding in the main bedroom looks luxurious and fresh.

Remember, you’re selling an aspirational lifestyle, so your bedroom should feel restful and cozy.

6 Make a vacant home look appealing

If you’ve already moved out, furnish your home to welcome buyers when they walk through the door.

Large open spaces and different rooms are difficult for buyers to visualize, but when the room is staged with areas clearly defined by rugs and furniture, it’s easier for buyers to see the full potential of a space. Sometimes, professionally staging a vacant home is necessary but not always. Consult your real estate agent first.

When your home is given that extra oomph, it shows buyers you care about the property, and you have been taking care of it. And when buyers feel reassured, they’ll feel comfortable making an offer. We are here to help you prepare your home for sale. We also have professional stagers that we work with, that can help you if needed. Our hope is that with these tips, you can successfully prepare your home for sale with ease.

Source: Originally published blog in the Living Room  CREA CAFE Realtor.ca