Dress to Impress: How to Stage Your Home to Boost its Value
Making your house ready for its very first viewing can be both fun and terrifying. Especially when you’ve lived in and loved your home for many years – home staging kind of feels like taking the humanity out of it. You don’t have to spend a fortune on hiring professional home-whisperers to stage it the way potential buyers would like to see it – use a handful of these good ideas, and you can take the control yourself.
Why all this talk about staging?
The bottom-line of staging a home is to make it possible for potential buyers to imagine it as their own. A professional is able to do it with a few easy-breezy moves as they have experience with what buyers usually look for – but, at the end of the day, you’re the one who knows your house better than any. Visit www.manausa.com for professional advice or simply pull up your own sleeves.
Sure, you can choose not to stage it, and you’ll probably sell your home nonetheless. The chances are, however, that you could get a much better offer on it if you’ve made the extra effort and tried to think like a real-estate agent. It’s about more than keeping it clean and representable – in fact, you should try to avoid making it representable at all.
People want to fill their new home with their own memories and dreams; they don’t want to be reminded of the previous owners and what kind of life they lived there.
Clean and tidy home
Try to focus on how you would clean and tidy up your house for a dinner-party. Get all of that over with before you do anything else; then you can get to the actual work. You need to clean it so proper that it would shut up even your mother-in-law as she walked in; shiny appliances in the kitchen, a sparkling bathroom, and a fresh breath of air in every room is necessary. You want it to look like everything is new – and even if you’re not going to sell your home with the appliances, make sure they’re spot free in any way.
Remember that the outside of your home needs to be staged as well. A well-maintained garden and a clean driveway, free from personal stuff like toys and bikes, gives an excellent first impression. A fresh coat of paint is a good idea if it looks old and worn, and remember that potential buyers will look at anything that could cost them extra money – roof repairs and loose panels are the worst, so make sure this is under control.
Keep it formal
Your home is where you’re comfortable, relaxed, and in your element. It’s doubtlessly been decorated with your precious memories, collectables, and other things that speak to you – but they don’t speak to a potential new owner.
Anything that reveals current inhabitants should be cleared away before the first viewing; that means no names spelled in funny letters on the refrigerator door, no framed pictures of loved ones by the fire place, and certainly no children’s toys laying around. Have a look at www.stagemyownhome.com for a comprehensive guide to depersonalization.
You’re in charge, and it’s up to you how much work you put into it, just remember that more effort means more money – at least, so they say.
