Staging your home to sell it is a critical project to getting top dollar and selling fast. When we talk about selling your home, we’re talking about the single most valuable item most Americans own.
So, it’s important to take great care in selling or renting out your home. The transaction of selling your home should be one that helps you realize a positive net worth increase. If you are renting out the property, you should attract better tenants who pay top dollar in monthly rent by staging your home well.
Let’s look at some of the top staging ideas that help you sell or rent your home out fast, for top dollar, and if renting, to a premium quality tenant.
Neutral Paint
When thinking about the paint job in each room in your home, the goal is to make each room with large, inviting, and fresh. Using neutral paint in rooms in your home can soften any older finishes in each space. Today, warmer colors are considered neutral, along with off-white hues. More than just beige, warm tones include tans, honeys and even soft blue-greens.
Declutter Every Space
When asked have to sell your home, you need to declutter. Some of us consider ourselves pack rats, while others consider themselves minimalists. Minimalists will have an easy-go at this but for those of you who like your ‘stuff’ – perhaps for emotional reasons – may find it more challenging to do what’s necessary here. But you have to remember that the in goal is to sell your home or rent it out for top dollar and as quickly as possible.
Decluttering does not mean stuffing cabinets and closets with things that used to be in the middle of the floor, on countertops, and on furniture. You see, home buyers will look at cabinets and closets to determine the quality of storage spaces. Storage space is one of the main selling points of a home, so stuffing things in the spaces is counterproductive. It may be time for some soul-searching and you may need to throw a lot of things away that should have been thrown away five years ago. Some things may need to be consigned, donated to Goodwill, and the rest, trashed.
After you’ve done this, you have to have a plan of what you’re going to do with toys, clothes and other items lying around the house that will need to ‘disappear’ when you have a house showing.
Furniture Staging
Many people think that pushing furniture to the walls makes rooms look bigger. The truth is that it doesn’t. Instead of doing this, some furniture should actually gain pull off the walls and grouped in such a way that the furniture of appears cozy and conversation. The traffic flow of a room should be intuitive.
Makeover Defunk Rooms
If you like a lot of homeowners, you have at least one room in your house is more or less a glorified storage closet. Maybe it’s your craft room or used for some other purpose, but it’s not well laid out. You probably have other ‘dead’ spaces that can be brought back to life. In order to stage your home well for a quick sale at top dollar you may add a comfortable armchair, a small table and lamp and simply organize any furniture or stuff flying around the room.
Home Lighting
lighting makes a huge difference in look and appearance of a home. Many homes are not properly lighted. A great real rule of thumb is to both have a 100 W light source for every 50 ft.² of space. Three types of lighting are ideal per room with – ambient (this is overhead or general lighting), task (reading, pendant, and under-cabinet) and accent (wall and table).
Fresh Floral
Fresh flowers and orchid arrangements are always fixtures in well-staged homes. It’s a small detail that speaks to the quality and class of the home. If you have useful vegetation around your yard, such as summer blooms, fern fronds or magnolia bugs, you can pick some of these and throw them in a vase instead of buying fresh flowers for every showing.
Complete Unfinished Business
The last thing a potential home buyer or renter wants to see is an unfinished painting, cabinet, floor or other project. Home buyers have no imagination, and he shouldn’t have to have one when purchasing or renting your home and retail price. This means that you need to take care of completing any unfinished projects. If you have cracks in the sidewalk, missing floorboards, holes in the walls, chipped paint on the walls, dirty carpet, etc., you need to address these things.
Old carpet does not look ‘retro,’ it looks old and dingy and ugly. You have gotten used to it, but potential home buyers will walk in and immediately see your deep traffic patterns running through the carpet. Carpet is something I usually just needs to be replaced – which can be done relatively inexpensively.
Small Touches, Big Impressions
If you have older window treatments, such as those old, apartment-great window blinds, you should consider upgrading the window treatments to some new, white, 2-inch-thick blinds for a dramatic and bold improvement. If you have old light fixtures, consider updating the home with some new, modern fixtures throughout the house.
Since home-buyers frown upon the appearance of pets, you should address any issues that your critters have made, such as urine stains, scratch marks on walls, and more. It’s important to keep you home ‘show-ready’ when you have kids and pets.
Open Windows and Lights Up
When you have a house showing, it’s important to open the blinds or curtains in every room and turned on all the lights in every room of the house. Open Windows make the rooms feel bigger, and being able to see grass and trees outside feel good, psychologically. It’s also important to turn off all lights in every room of the house to prevent the appearance of dark spaces and shadows. A well-lit house looks and feels bright, inviting, airy, and more luxurious.
Fresh Bakes Cookies
One of the next great touches you should consider when staging your house to perfection is adding fragrance. Nothing makes a person feel at home better than the smell of freshly baked cookies. However, there are many ways to get that same effect without actually baking cookies. You can use candles, potpourri pots, or fragrance wall inserts – throughout the house. You want that inviting fragrance of warm apple pie, cookies, or other banana-nut bread, lightly floating throughout the home.
Addressing all areas will help you sell your home faster and for top dollar.
If you are selling your home in the Westminster, Maryland area, you should choose one of the top recommended real estate teams, Utz Real Estate.
If you are a real estate investor looking to rent out your property to the best tenant, don’t go at this task alone. Working with a professional property management company can relieve many of the headaches of landlording and help you accelerate your success as an investor. That’s why you should contact Utz Property Management.
If you have a home improvement project you need help with to realize your dream space or to get your home ‘show-ready’, contact Utz Handyman and Remodeling Service.
