How to Stage Your Home for a Really Quick Sale

When you are ready to sell your home, you need to know how to stage your home for a really quick sale. Most real estate agents will all agree that staging your home will help you sell in a little faster than homes that are not staged. Home staging is a method of decorating your home to showcase its best assets. This method helps impress buyers who come to view your home. Before we go over how to stage your home for sale, lets review the importance of home staging.

How to stage your home – Why it’s important

Home staging is an optional method that many home sellers are using to help them through the financial portion of the home sale. When a home is staged, you are more likely to get your asking price the first time. Not staging your home could have buyers offering you lower than your asking price.

Staging your home is one of the most lucrative things you can do to help the sale. Potential buyers are not just looking at the structure of your home. They are looking for a home that can improve their lifestyle. Therefore, staging your home can show potential buyers just how wonderful your home is and how it could improve their lifestyle. Home staging also helps by showing buyers that no work needs to be done when buying the home.

How to stage your home for sale 

These how to stage your home tips can be used as a general guide to each room of your home. These tips will include staging for the interior of the home; kitchen, living room, bedrooms, bathroom, and garage. It will also include exterior staging; front yard, backyard, entryway, and back patio.

How to stage your home for sale – Cleaning

You want the entire property as clean as possible. Your kitchen should shine, so keep-in-mind that if you will be leaving appliances they need to so clean they shine. Clean all cabinets inside and out, all counter tops, floors and windows. Your bathrooms should sparkle. Scrub, scrub, scrub until your bathrooms are sparking. And don’t forget the windows. Your goal is to make everything look new. Also, don’t forget to clean the windows inside and out in every room of your home. This helps let natural light in and gives an overall cleaner look.

How to stage your home for sale – Declutter 

There are two big issues with clutter when you are selling your home. One issue is that buyers will be distracted if your home has too much clutter. It can be hard for them to see around that. The other issue is that it makes your homes space look smaller than it actually is. You want and need to make your space look as spacious as possible. So, put away all your knickknacks. And, don’t forget your closets. The more you can take out the better. Just a few things are needed in the closet to give a larger feel.

How to stage your home for sale – Remove odors

If you have kids and pets, you probably have odors. Whether you can smell it or not, it is there. Pet odors are a huge turn off to potential buyers. Inexpensive tricks for ridding a home of odors and giving it an inviting aroma include baking cinnamon-coated apples in the oven, burning vanilla-scented candles, or throwing some slice-and-bake cookies in the oven. It’s also a good idea to grind half a lemon in the garbage disposal to remove sink odors. Also, don’t smoke in your home, that is an even bigger turn off than pet odors.

How to stage your home – Depersonalize

Remove all your family photos and items that are personal. Removal all refrigerator art and children’s and pet toys. This is a simple step that can have a huge impact.

How to stage your home – Lighting 

This super simple step is all too often forgotten. You need as much lighting as possible. To obtain the best lighting, open blinds and curtains, replace any light bulbs that are not working and use high wattage bulbs that are bright. It is best to replace outdated light fixtures if possible. Fixtures can help sell your home, so they need to be updated. When showing your home, make sure all blinds and curtains are open and all lights are on.

How to stage your home – Exterior

This is the most important part of home staging. The exterior of your home is what buyers will see first. If it looks like it is not maintained, buyers will drive on without stopping to see the inside.

Make sure your lawn, hedges, trees and other plants are well-maintained and neatly pruned and eliminate any weeds. To brighten windows, wash them well, and consider adding flower boxes to brighten them up further. If you can, power wash your home’s exterior – it can make it look almost freshly painted but with less effort and expense. Make sure the sidewalk leading up to the house is clear and clean, and purchase new doormats for the front and back doors. If you have a pool, showcase it by making sure it’s crystal clear. Creating some sort of outdoor living space in the backyard, such as a deck or patio with outdoor furniture, is another way to use the exterior of your home to its greatest advantage.