Staging Your Home

Taking the time to prepare and stage your home can bring you

higher offers and get your home sold more quickly.

Exterior Improvements:

Most buyers will make quick judgments about your house, and buyers begin forming their opinion of your house long before they go inside. Curb appeal, the external attractiveness of your property when viewed from the street, is critically important. Here are some reliable ways to enhance your house's curb appeal:

Painting: Painting your house's exterior before you put it on the market gives the biggest bang for your fix-up buck. White, light grays or soft tans are safe choices for exterior walls. If your house doesn't need a new paint job, at least touch up window frames, front shutters, gutters and down spouts. Also, be sure to give your mailbox and front door a fresh coat of paint.

Lawn: A freshly mowed, neatly trimmed lawn gives your house a well-maintained appearance. Make sure toys, lawn equipment and garden hoses aren't scattered around the yard. You can also make your grass look extra lush and green by fertilizing it.

Sidewalks: Sweep your sidewalks daily. Keep them free of snow and ice in the winter.

Shrubbery: Remove or replace any dead or dying trees, hedges, or shrubs and prune anything that looks unkempt or overgrown. Cut back overgrown shrubs that block windows and keep light from entering your house.

Flowers: Filling flower beds with seasonal flowers is an inexpensive way to add color and charm to a property.

Repairs: Be sure that all gutters and down-spouts are in place and clean. Replace missing roof shingles and broken or cracked windows. Repair cracks in your driveway and remove large oil stains. Replace or repair broken stairs, torn window screens, broken or missing fence slats, and defective doorknobs. Make sure that your front and back doors, garage doors, and all windows open easily. Check exterior lights to be certain that they're working properly

Windows: Keep your windows spotless inside and out throughout your home. When you're not home, curious buyers attracted by the For Sale sign have been know to peek through the windows to size up your house.

Eliminate or Hide Clutter: Clear everything you don't need out of the garage. Friends and family who live nearby can be a great source of temporary places to store excess items. If you can't clean your garage out, at least keep the door closed. Try to keep the number of cars, trucks, boats, and campers parked in front of your house to a minimal.

 

Interior Improvements:

Clean, Scrub, and Polish: Your stove, oven, refrigerator, microwave oven, and other appliances must be spotlessly clean inside and out. Scour walls, floors, bathtubs, showers, and sinks until they sparkle. Don't forget to clean the ventilating hood in your kitchen.

Eliminate Odors: Buyers will notice strong smells as soon as they walk through your front door, so eliminate smoke, mildew, and pet odors. Cleaning drapes and carpets helps get rid of odors. Remove ashes from the fireplace. Use air fresheners or citrus-scented potpourri to keep your house odor free. Whether you do the work or hire someone, make sure that your house is spotless.

Fix Drippy Faucets: If any of your sinks or bathtubs drain slowly, unclog them. Just as car buyers love to kick tires, some property buyers test houses by flushing toilets and running water in sinks and bathtubs to check drains.

Get Rid of Clutter: Eliminating clutter and excess furniture makes rooms appear larger. Store, sell, or give away surplus or bulky furniture. Closet space sells houses too. Clean and organize closets, bookcases, and drawers.

Profit From Your Clutter: Ironically, the clutter that reduces your house's value is far from worthless. On the contrary, your clutter is someone else's treasure. Make a donation to your favorite charity and earn a tax deduction (be sure to ask for a donation receipt). Or, have a garage sale.

Make cosmetic improvements: Painting isn't expensive if you do it yourself, but be careful when selecting interior colors. In most cases you should try to avoid bright, bold colors with strong visual impact. You may love the effect, but you aren't the buyer. It's smart to stick to conventional whites, soft pastels, and other neutral colors. If your basement is dark and gloomy, paint the walls and ceiling a light color and put the highest wattage light bulbs you can safely use in your light fixtures to brighten the space up. Repair cracks in the floor.

 

Before You Market Your Home:

Prudent purchasers will have your property thoroughly inspected before they buy it. Expect inspectors to poke into everything -- your house's roof, chimney, gutters, plumbing, electrical wiring, heating and cooling systems, insulation, smoke detectors, all the permanent appliances and fixtures in your kitchen and bathrooms, and the foundation. They'll also check for health, safety, and environmental hazards. 

 

Be Aware: Suppose that your house needs a new foundation. The problem is there whether you know about it or not. Why wait for an ultimatum to fix the foundation at a cost established by the buyer's inspection? If you discover the problem before marketing the house, you can disclose it to prospective buyers with a repair estimate. Your negotiating position is much stronger if you know about problems in advance -- and accurately know the cost to correct them. Concentrate on buyers who are willing to do corrective work after the closing if your price and terms are fair.

Financial planning: It's very important to have a realistic estimate of your present house's net proceeds of sale before committing to buy a new home. If your house needs major repairs, you'll pay for them one way or another -- either by doing the repairs yourself, by reducing your asking price to reflect the cost of repairs, or by giving buyers a credit to do the work. A good pre-marketing inspection can reveal all these problems will review latent defects -- flaws hidden out of sight behind walls or concealed in inaccessible areas, such as under your house or up in the attic where you can't see them.

Fine tuning: Professional property inspectors can help you spot minor defects, such as dirty filters in the heating system; ventilation problems in the basement, garage, or crawl space; blocked gutters; loose doorknobs; stuck windows; a missing chimney hood or spark arrester, and so on. Eliminating small maintenance problems like these gives prospective buyers who tour the property a favorable -- and correct -- impression that your house is extremely well-maintained.

Peace of mind: The inspector alerts you to health and safety precautions you should take. Installing smoke detectors, grounding electrical outlets, and keeping flammable products away from furnaces, heaters, and fireplaces, for example, make your house safer for the next owner and safer for you as long as you continue living in it.

 

Staging Your Home:

If you've ever visited a new home development and walked through the builder's model home, you know exactly what staging is. Builders usually do extremely elaborate staging jobs.

Staging finishes the process you started with the three Cs (clean up, clear out, and cosmetic improvements). Here are some staging tips that you can use to increase your home's appeal

Kitchen: Aromas from fragrant goodies like freshly baked cookies or just-brewed coffee are appealing to most people.

Bathrooms: Always have fresh towels in bathrooms. Buy new shower curtains; and put new soap in the soap dishes.

Collections: Everyone has collections -- family photos on the wall, autographed baseballs, dolls, trophies the kids won in school, whatever. Put away your collections so people focus on the task at hand -- buying your house.

Clear Everything Off Your Refrigerator: Most folks use magnets or tape to stick everything from vacation snapshots and finger-painting masterpieces to notes for the kids and "to do" lists on the surface of their refrigerator.

Comfort: Keep your house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. A house that's too hot or too cold isn't inviting.

Fireplace: Functioning fireplaces are utilitarian (another heat source) and romantic (candlelit dinners by the fire). If you have a fireplace, spotlight it. Polish your fireplace tools. Pile logs neatly in the fireplace. When your house is shown on cold fall or winter days, nothing says "Welcome" like the warmth, glow, crackle, and smell of a blazing fire.

Flowers: Vases of colorful, fresh flowers spotted throughout the house make a wonderful impression on prospective buyers. Bouquets of carnations, daisies, tulips, or other seasonal flowers from your local supermarket are great.

Furniture: Rearrange furniture to create a warm, inviting feeling.

Light: Bright, well-lit houses seem more spacious and cheerful. During the day, open all your curtains and drapes. If the view is unappealing, get sheer window coverings that let light through, but mask the view. When you show your house, brighten up rooms by turning on all your lamps, even during the day. Be sure hallways and stairways are brightly lit. Don't forget to turn on closet lights, oven lights, and the lights over your stove and kitchen counter.

Prospective buyers often drop in or drive by in the evening to see how your house looks at night. Interior lights that can be seen from the street make a house look cozy and inviting. From sunset until you go to bed, keep at least one light on in each room that faces the street.