How To Stage Your Home

Staging a home before it is listed can be a very powerful marketing tool.  In a well-staged house, you are highlighting the features of the home and allowing the buyers to envision themselves as the homeowner.

Here are some suggestions on how to stage your home that will cause your home to make a great impression on home buyers.

Why stage your home before putting it on the market?

Whether you do it yourself or hire an expert, making the effort to stage your home for prospective buyers can be a powerful way to make your home stand apart from all the other listings in your neighborhood. Staging your home can help prospective buyers imagine themselves living in it, which is an important first step in getting them to think about making an offer.

How to begin the process of staging your home

1. Depersonalize: This can be hard on some sellers, but one purpose of staging is to allow possible buyers to imagine themselves calling your house home, and that’s tough to do if personal photos, items, and keepsakes are everywhere they look. Go through your home and remove those personal items that make your home feel like yours.
2. Declutter: The best way to do this is to go room by room, removing the things you will not need while your house is on the market. The most important areas to pay attention to are your closets, cabinet and kitchen pantry.  You want them to show to potential buyers that your house has adequate storage. Consider renting a storage unit for all the stuff you remove.
3. Really clean:  The objective here is to have your home so clean that it looks like a display home, like no one is living in the home. The flooring should be vacuumed and mopped, no water marks on the countertops or in the sinks, baseboards and lighting fixtures are free of dust, and the windows and mirrors should be clean with no smudges. A clean house tells prospective buyers that the home has been well cared for and maintained by the homeowners.
4. Eliminate any signs of family pets: Be sure to clean your pet’s area completely and remove toys, food dishes, and water bowls. You may even want to have someone give you their honest opinion on pet odor and remedy it if necessary.

10 best staging concepts for your home

As soon as you have depersonalized, decluttered, really cleaned, concealed all traces of family pets, you can then get to the actual process of staging your house. Here are some great ideas:

1. Go neutral for greater appeal: You will need to tone down the colors. Neutrals are your best bet. Not everyone will like that lime green bedroom or deep yellow dining room. Consider making all rooms gender-neutral. The new owners won’t necessarily utilize the rooms the same way you do.
2. Update the small things: Take notice of all the little upkeep items that a buyer might see. It’s definitely worth the time to re-caulk or re-grout in the bathroom tile, touch-up where paint is chipped, remove old wallpaper, change outdated hardware on cabinets, even replace old door knobs.
3. Make your home light and bright: One of the most important aspects to potential buyers is how much light there is in a house. Make sure that any burned-out light bulbs are replaced. Switch out lower wattage for higher wattage bulbs. Open up the blinds and curtains. And of course before any showings, don’t forget to switch on all the lights.
4. Place furniture in conversational groupings: Look at the furniture in each room and move it around to create conversational groupings. One idea is to place loveseats and sofas facing each other. This also has the benefit of increasing the amount of space in rooms. Be unconventional. Staging your house is to get it sold, not for how to actually live in it.
5. Show off unusual floor plans: Highlight anything that makes your home unique and special such as a butler’s pantry, an atrium, a wine cellar, or a mother-in-law’s apartment. Or add interest by creating a reading nook in an unused corner or show the benefit of an extra storage area.
6. Use your “best” accents: Such as only stage your master bath with your brand-new “guest” bath towels, or consider none at all. Do not use the miss-matched bath towels from your bachelor days.
7. Make the area appear bigger: Mirrors are a great addition to bounce around light and make a room look bigger. Make your big dining room table the smallest it can be by removing the leaves. Take out any extra occasional chairs and tables that clog the flow of traffic in a room.
8. Use all your extra rooms intentionally: If at all possible, every room in your home should have a function; don’t leave a room empty. Stage it as a hobby room, guest bedroom, home office, or workout room, but never all of those things at the same time!
9. Set the kitchen and dining room tables: Pull out the good china and linens. It’s a nice touch that can assist the purchaser envision themselves living there.
10. Don’t forget the outside: Curb appeal will be the first impression potential buyers will get of your home. Keep the lawn cut and bushes pruned. Plant some flowers. Repair any broken siding or sagging gutters. Scrap and repaint any peeling paint. Clean any patio furniture. Stow away any kids toys and bikes.

Ways to have staging done

• Stage the house yourself: Using the ideas above, staging your own home is definitely an option, and it’s an economical one. Just make certain to leave yourself sufficient time to complete your to-do list prior to your home going on the market.
• Partial home staging: An inexpensive option, a partial house staging is when you do the decluttering and cleaning yourself, prior to using an expert stager to add the finishing touches.  They will rearrange your furniture and decor so that it will be buyer friendly.  A stager can also be hired to simply go through your house and give their opinion on what you can do to prepare your home for sale, and the real staging tasks will depend on you. They generally charge in between $100 and $150 an hour.
• Full-service professional home staging: If you’re in a competitive market, or don’t have the time or interest in staging your home on your own, you may wish to think about employing a full-service house stager. Some stagers charge by the room ($250-$500 a room, depending upon where you live), while some charge between 1% and 3% of your home’s sale price. The rate will typically consist of both the services of the expert stager, and the leasing of all the furniture and accessories they bring with them, for a contracted amount of time (usually about a month).
• Live-in stagers: A trend that is emerging in high-end home markets is a live-in stager. A live-in stager is a person that is part of your staging team who briefly moves into your house after you’ve moved out. They are hired to make sure the house is always in show-ready condition, warm, and welcoming. It can be especially helpful if you’re attempting to sell a home that is in another city.

Staging maintenance: The goal is to sell your home fast and the time you are living in a staged house won’t last too long. But consider these house staging suggestions to help sell your home quick:

• Have a daily routine or hire a weekly house cleaning service: It’s easy to let things slide, so either hire somebody to come in clean every week, or give yourself a few workable daily chores to keep your home in great shape while it’s on the market.
• Purchase a robotic vacuum: Use innovation to do the work of day-to-day vacuuming. That way, there will never be even a single dust bunny on the floor during a showing.
• Request extra time if you have kids:  If you have children in your home, let your real estate agent know that you want at least two hours’ notice before a showing so you can tidy up and get out the door.
• Consider having someone keep your pets: Not everybody wishes to be welcomed by your family pet when touring your home. Have somebody watch your family pets during the time your home is listed or have a to-go bag with all their supplies and take them with you during every showing.