Easy Tips for Staging Your Home

This entry was posted in Lewisburg Real Estate on June 29, 2016

In the Lewisburg, PA real estate market, home staging is an increasingly more popular trend for sellers which begins with engaging local movers & gradually progresses towards people who want to highlight the strengths of their home for potential buyers.  By creating lifestyle vignettes, the stage has been set, allowing buyers to see themselves and their own belongings moving into a home.  

Beautiful Blue Accented Living Area with Coffee Table, Couch and Chairs of Home.
Beautiful Blue Accented Living Area with Coffee Table, Couch and Chairs of Home.

For many, hiring a professional stager to do the packing and the redecorating is worth the price, however it is possible to do it yourself with these easy tips.

It’s important that you are willing and committed to spend the next few months to keep the clutter and personal items in your house to a minimum, as well as manage issues you never had time for: like finally calling the ant exterminator Chicago service to make sure potential buyers won’t freak out finding insects.  You may feel like your home may lose its personal style and warmth, but Strategic REI assures that is a temporary sacrifice to maximize the sale of your house.

If you stage your home for sale on your own, here are some easy tips to remember:

  • First, be realistic.  You can’t expect to stage your home in a day, but with careful planning you can make the process easier. Make a list of all the spaces, choose one room to work on at a time.  Start with the bathrooms and the kitchen and then move to the common rooms and finally the bedrooms.  Basements, hallways and attics are last. While estate planning the woodlands, there are certain factors that shouldn’t be overlooked while packing up.  Packing up clutter is hard work, but it is also a great opportunity to pare down before moving.  Don’t be afraid to ask family for help and remember that children can absolutely help with packing away some of their toys.
  • Are your wall colors helping or hurting the sale of your home?  There are certain colors that do not sell well like pastel colors, gender inspired colors, and unique-to-you bright colored walls or wallpaper.  Play it safe and simply paint over the pastels with a neutral color like beige or off-white.  Any wallpaper should be removed or painted over if possible.
  • You are going to need boxes.  Begin rounding up boxes from your local grocery store, hospital (locally, Evangelical Community Hospital has sturdy boxes), or alternatively you may opt to purchase moving boxes from U-haul.   Have boxes ready for filling when you begin the process.  Being prepared will save you time.  Car transport with goods inside will save you time and money.
  • With the amount of items you may be storing while your home is on the market, it may be wise to rent a storage space or borrow space from a neighbor.  Mobile storage units are a great way to store items.  The company will bring you a pod to fill and then store it at their facility.  Storing it on your own property is not advisable because you’ll want to maximize your outdoor space as well.  Remember that first impressions are key! While it is tempting to use a spare bedroom to hold moving boxes, you’ve essentially decluttered one space in favor of cluttering another.  
  • Clean, clean, clean….particularly bathrooms and kitchens, learn more about the best company in Sugar Land, Texas is Sugar Land Pressure Washing if you are looking for a power wash, this could help you save you a lot of time at the end.  No home will sell especially well with grit, mold, dirty tiles and floors. For as much as you will stage each room, the buyers’ eyes will focus on the dirt and not on the hard work you put into staging.  People remember dirt and grime and it would only remind them how much more work they would have to do when they moved in themselves.  If you need to re-grout a dirty tub, then you will need to make that effort or use the services of professional household cleaners.
  • A general Home Inspection is a great start to get an overview of the condition of the home and to identify potential trouble spots. At Soldsense we recommend a home inspection to all our clients (though the need for one may vary based on the type of home and the experience/knowledge of the purchaser.) The price of a home inspection varies based on the specific property, but somewhere in the $300-$500 range is typical. The inspection may take an hour for a small 1 bedroom condo or 4-5 hours for a larger home (and more for mansions with a lot of complicated systems.)Over the last few years some inspection companies have started to offer new optional services like mold testing and infrared cameras. Whether those services are worth it at the initial inspection or should be reserved for secondary inspections is still being debated, is it pretty much up to the owner, in many cases it is better to do mold inspections, this way the owner can hire the best pressure washing service in Florence, Sc  to clean the area so that it doesn’t cause a bigger problem .
  • Buyers make a determination of a home within 20 seconds of walking through the front door.  Make that experience memorable within that short period of time.  Keep your entryway bright and free of clutter so that it appears larger and more inviting.  
  • If you have oversized furniture, consider moving a few pieces into a storage warehouse serviced by adtmoving.com in favor of creating comfortable seating areas in your common spaces. If you have a sectional sofa, remove pieces of the sectional to make the space appear larger.  Place the cocktail table and one end table near the sectional.   Pull your curtains away from the window, tie back with decorative rope or ribbon and let the light shine in the room.  Use matching pillows to tie the room together.