First impressions are everything. When you have a limited time to make a judgment call, then you have to go by appearances. It works this way for job interviews, meeting people for the first time, and even homes for sale. If you are planning to sell a house, you have to make sure to put its best foot forward to sell it quickly.
There are a lot of things to do to prepare your home for sale, but none are as important as proper staging. This is basically a facelift you give the house to make sure it looks the right way for a buyer.
If you are curious about if you need to do anything special for staging a house, then you need some information. In this article, we will go over what staging is and how to do it right.
What Is Staging?
The objective of staging is to put your house in the best possible light to make a person see themselves living in it. Emotions are very important when it comes to purchases, and a house is one of the biggest emotional purchases a person can make. Staging is the way to tap into those emotions and entice a person to want to buy.
It isn’t manipulative; it is simply crafting an image or even a feeling by using the space to its full potential. Staging is a very fine line between making the property look good and being obvious that you put a lot of effort into it.
When you overdo the staging, it can come across as manipulative and become a turn-off for the people coming to look at it. Baking cookies before an open house was a way to make it feel like home, but it actually makes a person realize that you’re trying too hard as nobody would bake cookies and then leave.
Why It’s Important
When you stage a house for a sale, you want it to look as much as possible to somebody’s dream house. The problem is that everybody has different ideas for what their dream house is. You have to set things up in a way that a person can see themselves in the home and make it their own.
You’ll need to furnish it with things like a bedroom TV stand and some cozy furniture like couches and chairs. But, at the same time, it has to be understated enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s somebody else’s house.
The key is that people should see a finished house and not see all of the things that need to be fixed or updated. It may be that you have to buy some new furniture just to do the staging, but it will pay off with a better offer if you do.
When a home is staged, it looks better in the pictures that are used for the MLS listing, and it can increase the offer price by about 1% to 5% more than when it isn’t staged.
The Basics of Staging
Depersonalizing is the goal when it comes to setting up the house. It doesn’t matter what your tastes are as far as design; it’s important to keep things neutral while also looking good.
Remove anything that will remind the buyer that somebody else is living there. All personal photographs should be removed as well as any toys or personal effects. Leaving these things around will act as a barrier to somebody being able to envision themselves in the house.
This also goes for the smells in the house. It should smell fresh but also unlived in, which is why it is not a good idea to go the freshly baked cookie route when hosting an open house. Focus on fresh scents like citrus or lavender, so it doesn’t have a lived-in smell. Deodorizing the home is also essential as the smell of pets or other cooking should be neutralized.
Make sure that each room has a purpose and doesn’t look empty. Once again, it is to help people visualize themselves in the home, so when they see a bedroom, they will imagine themselves sleeping there. Have bedrooms look like bedrooms and any other room be something else. For instance, a room you usually keep empty can make a good recreation room, or another could be a home office.
Lastly, change any flooring that looks dated or worn, so it is one less thing a person has to deal with when they come in. Always go for a neutral-colored rug or flooring.
