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Staging Your Home Pays Big

Staging Your Home Pays Big

If you want top dollar for your home when you sell it, stage your home. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the average staging investment is between 1 and 3% of the home’s asking price, which generates a return of 8 to 10%. That’s an excellent return on investment!

Not everyone has the vision or experience to imagine how selecting modern and staging with minimal furniture alters the feel of a home. Staging takes into consideration the feel inside and out. When considering your stage, imagine the mood you want to suggest. Make the furniture suggest the home feeling you’re looking for and gain top value when selling. Here are six ways you can do that.

Staging Your Home Must Do’s

  1. Make it Pretty: The outside of your home is where you need to make the first good first impression. Keep the grass well-watered (even in the drought if you can) and mowed. Have your trees trimmed and scraggly plants pruned. Plant flowers – simple annuals will do. Staging also includes storing hoses, firewood and other items out of sight. After dark, turn on your front porch and exterior lighting.
  2. De-Clutter: Buyers need to see your home. By emptying the home of excess clutter and limiting table and bookcase surfaces to only one or two items, you allow potential buyers to imagine their own possessions in the home. Store any items that created the clutter in garage or offsite -or sell them and rid yourself of the extra weight. RightSizing is fun!
  3. Tie it Up: Your buyer wants to feel invited into her or his new home.Can you present your home like a spa? Try a fancy fold on the toilet paper, a basket with scents and spa treatments and salts.
  4. Adorn Minimally: Make your home as comfortable as possible with the most minimal of adornments. Instead, highlight a welcoming warmth with many senses. Invite a homey mood through lighting and inviting music. Stage the features too! Light a fire, set the table, highlight viewing areas with a wine accompaniment, and lose the tchotchkes.
  5. De-personalize: The home needs to feel not like yours, but like your buyers. Since you don’t know what they’ll be drawn to -take the middle road. Make sure the messages in the home (through art, books, organization) make the feeling of the home welcoming. Remove most or all of the photos of your family, your pets and your friends. Take the magnets and calendars off the fridge. Think five star hotel spa.
  6. Aromatize: To give the olfactory senses a lift, bakecookies to warm the senses and add open boxes of baking soda in smell-prone areas to eliminate bad smells. Shampoo carpets, dry-clean drapes, and be sure to empty the trash, bathe pets and remove the litter box to the garage. Add infused scent sticks to bathrooms and walk in closets to ensure every area feels and smells great.

If you have questions about downizing before selling your home, or just to lighten up the feel, and need help on where to begin, please contact me, Paige Kaye. I’m happy to help.