Get Your House Ready To Sell: Tips from Home Stagers
Getting your home ready to sell is not high on anyone’s list. If you’re lucky, you can hire a home stager to come and do it for you. However, if you’re not so fortunate, you’ll either be doing the brunt work yourself or having troubles selling your house for the price you want. Granted everyone is having trouble selling their homes these days, but it’s all the more reason to make your house the shiniest on the block attractive to those small number of buyers.
What can you do on your home to get your house ready? I’ve gone to the masters of home staging, professional home stagers, to get tips to help the DIY sellers.
> Declutter, depersonalize. This is one that all the professionals would agree on and I think is an obvious one. Treasures to you are junk to others. Don’t take it personally, just get all that stuff out of there!
> Stage the second bedroom of a two-bedroom home/condo as a bedroom. According to Nickie Rothwell of the Home Staging Blog, you should stage your second room as a bedroom, not an office. People with kids would want (need) to see how it works as a bedroom.
> It’s okay to decorate for Christmas. Jeannett Fisher, Interior Design Psychology and Home Staging Expert that writes the Home Staging Tips blog, responded to a question from a seller wondering if it is okay to put up a Christmas tree. The very PC seller didn’t want to offend any potential buyers with his display of his religious beliefs. Fisher tells people to decorate your home for you and your family and friends. She just warns about putting up too much and recommends scaling back on your usual decorations. As for offending buyers, she thinks it’s not a big deal. According to her, buyers are used to seeing Christmas decorations and holiday traditions everywhere they go.
> Get that bathroom shining. Lisa LaPorta, the designer on the HGTV show Designed to Sell (one of my favorite designers), has several DIY tips for making your bathroom better. After all, how does the famous saying go? Kitchen and bathrooms sell homes. Her tips include…
- Get rid of surface mold. Mix one part water and one part bleach. Spray on wall and wipe. Fresh coat of paint helps, too.
- No need to replace the gross shower door, “just scour it.” Mix one part muriatic acid and 10 parts water. Scrub with steel wool.
- Paint ugly old tile. Coat tiles with high-adhesion primer. Brush on special ceramic expoxy covering. (Not sure I agree with this one… if you don’t get it just right, it could look hideous and like you’re trying to cover up something. All I have to say is be careful with this one).
- Replace your vanity with a pedestal sink. LaPorta says pedestal sinks are “a big hit with buyers.” (Again, not sure I agree. For guest bath, sure, but for a master, I’d wonder where I’d put all my stuff.)
> Put on soft music for your showings. Debra Gould, “the Staging Diva,” urges sellers to carefully consider music. She believes in soft background music to create a soothing environment and “camouflage” neighbor and traffic noise. However, she warns to make sure the volume is very low. She also warns that “blaring TVs are definitely a no-no.”
Other home staging posts:
Home Staging Revisted — Does it really help?
Everyone’s Doing It: Home Staging
Staging Diva said:
Julie, Thanks for including my suggestion about putting soft music on for real estate open houses. I agree with Nickie about staging the second condo bedroom as such. Unless it doesn’t have a closet and it’s the type of building that would appeal to young professionals, in which case I would show it as a home office, perhaps with a loveseat that could be a fold out bed (if there was enough space). That would suggest home office and guest room and wouldn’t be a big stretch for the buyer to realize that the love seat takes up about the same amount of space as a single bed.
Thanks for raising awareness of the importance of home staging! Given the current state of the real estate market, it’s never been more important for home sellers to showcase their properties to best advantage.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva ®
President, Six Elemements Inc.
October 11, 2008 10:22 AM
Julie Lance said:
Debra, thanks for the comment and suggestion on the office!
October 12, 2008 2:54 PM