Home Staging Importance
Megan Gates is an active blogger who provides written work to the blogosphere pertaining to NY Rentals, Long Island Rental Properties, home improvement and the latest architecture, design and fashion. Follow her on twitter @MEGatesDesign
Home staging is a must do for every house that wants to post the sign in the front yard marked sold. Make sure you put yourself in your potential buyer’s shoes. Look at your house from top to bottom. Even bring in a friend or a neighbor to help give another opinion. After observing, judge what needs to be done. Home staging is the industry term used when a seller is preparing and organizing their home to show off to potential buyers. How you stage your home can either make or break that sale. Staging can seem difficult to a homeowner who feels that they have no interior design experience, but it does not require a homeowner to have design experience, just a little knowledge and a couple tricks.
Organize & Declutter: As a seller, you want your potential buyers to envision their belongings in the space, so the first step is to get rid of all of the personal items (family photos, grocery lists, piles of mail). De-cluttering and cleaning is a common chore that many sellers overlook. A messy room only makes it look smaller and dirty. That may make buyer’s want to finish up the house tour and leave a.s.a.p! So clean away the less needed objects in your house as well as remove excess clutter to give a room an open look and feel. The only cost of this is time and elbow grease to make your house look clean and shiny.
Arrangement: Remove bulky furniture, big pictures, and anything else that will help a small room look bigger. Now that doesn’t mean you have to get new furniture or rent pieces. Cleaning everything and adding some little extras like throw pillows, blankets, or even a mirror add ways to keep your furniture looking fresh. Mirrors especially help make a room look bigger. If you are faced with any unused space, use some pieces or plants you already have and some creativity to give every square inch potential. If you have an awkward corner in a room, put in a bookshelf, a lamp and a chair that you de-cluttered from another room to create purpose inexpensively.
Color & Flair: Check out your rooms and make sure the colors are too bold or personalized. Maybe a simple coat of neutral paint is needed to transform an entire room from exotic to mainstream. If your kitchen is feeling outdated, don’t feel like you need to purchase new cabinets or appliances. A coat of paint and new hardware for your cabinets may be the economical face-lift that your kitchen needs. Changing up the lighting by replacing light bulbs with different tints, maybe add new blinds to adjust the outdoor lighting that shines in could revamp the look!
You may think that you can organize your home for staging by putting everything into boxes and stowing them away in closets or your basement. However, buyers want to be able to view the closet sizes and bonus rooms, such as attics and basements. By shoving all your belongings in there, you lose an opportunity to showcase another feature of your home. Be sure to organize your belongings into labeled bins or boxes to be able to store your items nicely somewhere other than your house. Maybe store the bins and boxes at a friend’s house, family members, or rent a temporary storage place. Another thing that may help with some cash, of course with weather permitting, throw a garage sale and sell some un-needed items to save or spent on fixing up the house a little more.
