Selling Your Home? Tips and Tricks to Stage Your Own House for A Successful Sale
Although your furniture and belongings don’t come with the house you are selling, buyers are making assumptions and judging your home based on it.
Making sure your property is staged the best it can be will address any shortcomings within your house and make sure that buyers are seeing it at its best. That means more money and offers for you. I will give you tips and tricks on how to make your home look stunning so you know you are getting the most money possible. Read to the end to hear the important final touches you should make before showings.
One thing sellers don’t realize is that buyers are 100% viewing their furniture and belongings as part of their house. If you have dingy and dated furniture, buyers think your house is dingy and dated. The house could be brand new and they will think it's old. If your furniture is too big for the room, buyers will think the house is too small. You could have a 1,000 sq foot living room but if the furniture is too big for it they will just walk away, shaking their heads at how that living room was just so small. This is also the case if you don’t have enough furniture. Buyers will think your house looks unwelcoming and hospital-like. As I am sure you can imagine this all adds up to less interest in your house and less dinero in your pocket. And I know what some of you are thinking. Well, I sold my last house without doing any of this stuff and it was fine. So, I counter your thoughts with, how do you know you couldn’t have made more?
Now that I might have your attention peaked, I will get to the good stuff. Let’s get your house in tip-top shape.
First, take a look around each room in your home. You can bring friends over to do this too so you have other opinions. Do you think your rooms have too much stuff in them, or not enough? I feel like every person has that one room in their house that is either the catch-all or they never did anything with. Whatever it is, pick a room to start with and figure out its issues. If you need some reference points here are some examples of rooms and what they should look like when you list. Use these and compare them to yours to get an idea.
Remember that you want every room in your house to have a purpose and for that to be obvious to the buyers.
If you have a family room and a living room directly next to each other, set up the room farthest from the kitchen as a sitting area for conversation and then center the other around a T.V. You also want to make sure you have designated areas in your house so people don’t feel your house is lacking something. Especially, in these times you want to make sure there is an office space somewhere in your home so you can give people the impression that working from home can be done. Make sure you have a dining area as well. If you are in a smaller house where dining space is very hard to find make sure you stage it somewhere that makes sense. Use Pinterest as inspiration for difficult areas. Make sure you do this regardless if you need it or not. Just because you don’t need an at-home office doesn’t mean more than half of the buyers walking into your home don’t. If people can’t envision it or don’t see how it’s possible, they are going to move on, so make sure they see it.
Let’s start with your room having too much stuff in it or your furniture being too big.
Rooms with too much stuff make buyers think they are small or outdated. Not what you want. What you will want to do is figure out, what is causing it to feel that way.
Do you have too many knick-knacks? Do you have too much furniture? Or is the furniture just too big for the space? Start by scaling it down. Keep in mind that your main goal is to move. Therefore, if there are things that are in the room that you want to keep that’s fine but move them to a storage unit or a friend or family member's house for the time being. If it's knick-knacks box them up and take them out. This also goes for collections, get them out too. You should only really have a couple of items in the room at most, so if that’s the case and you have too many? Out of there. The same goes for furniture. You should really only have a couple of pieces in each room. If your furniture is too big, is everything too big or just a few pieces? If just a few pieces, take them out and then work with what you have. If everything is too big then you should keep the couch since that is usually the priciest and then try to swap anything else you need in there from somewhere else in your house.
Say your room is too bare?
Rooms like this make buyers think they are sterile and boring. That certainly doesn’t bring in offers.
But going out and buying furniture for a house you are moving from really doesn’t make much sense. So, what you want to do is go shopping in your own house. Is there something you could move in there that would work that would look ok missing from another room? Obviously, I am not talking lateral moves here like moving a bed into another room, but say a chair would work great. Go through your house and see if there are any other rooms with chairs that would work that wouldn’t cause the room they are coming from to look bad. If you are in a pinch see if you could stage the room as something else. Say you have a spare bedroom that is totally empty. Could you stage it as an office? Maybe you have a desk that’s in another room that you could take out and use? Depending on the seller, I have made some rooms into craft rooms, dens, or even gyms. Try your best to work with what you have. If worse comes to worst there are usually cheap options for you to buy some filler furniture. Try Ikea, Wayfair, Target, or Walmart for some cheap quick new finds or donation stores, yard sales, and salvaged furniture stores for used pieces.
Once you have your furniture and belongings paired down and your rooms figured out, you will next have to make sure your furniture is set in each room properly.
A lot of times people like to push their furniture to the walls to make the room look bigger. Most of the time this actually does the opposite. You want your furniture to “float” from the walls. This actually makes the room look cozier and more welcoming. Make sure any chairs are set up in a “conversational” manner. If you have a fireplace center everything around that as your main focal point. Try to make the traffic flow obvious and you should try to have about 3 feet of space for that.
Now that you have all your furniture in place it's time for what I like to call the icing. Accessorizing is what brings rooms together and makes them feel at home. Which is want you to want the buyers to think about yours. There are a couple of ways to do this.
Area rugs.
They tie the room together so use them whenever they are needed. Make sure you use solid or similar color patterns so you don’t make the room look too busy. They are also much easier to match that way.
Curtains.
If you have curtains make sure the rods are hung to the top of your ceiling if possible. This will make your room look super tall, but remember you need to have longer curtains. Ikea has some fantastic cheap options that are super long. Also, have your curtains be in neutral, solid colors as well and they need to be touching or slightly pooling on the floor.
Bedding.
In your bedrooms make sure your bedding looks nice. Plain, dingy bedding, covered in animal hair is a huge turn-off for buyers. Add some throw pillows for a pop of color if you need it.
Pictures.
Pictures on the walls need to be a fine balance. You shouldn’t have too many and you shouldn’t have too few. If you have too many pair them down but make sure you are filling the holes and painting. If you have too little try and take some from other rooms. Worst case you can usually find some pictures that would work for low cost at thrift stores or salvaged furniture places.
Accessorize.
My final trick is to make sure you accessorize in threes. Try to use that in the back of your mind when you are finishing a room. Three of something always looks better and make sure the taller things are in the back. Scale is very important in rooms so make sure you don’t see anything that seems to be blank or a hole. If you do, rearrange or get some filler pieces.
Now that the rooms are done you don’t want to forget the final touches. Deep clean everything from top to bottom. Then hide anything related to pets. You obviously can take them out when you are there but for showings, it should all disappear. Stick dog beds under couches or beds and put dog bowls in cabinets. Lastly, make your home smell good. Just make sure it's one scent, not a mixture, and that it's not overpowering, just a hint.
Once you’re done your home should look transformed for little to no money and you should be able to sit back and wait for those offers to roll in. Now that your home is staged you should watch my next video, “10 Simple Tips for Making Your Home Stand Out in Real Estate Photos.”
Your home's real estate pictures are the first thing a buyer is going to see and how they look will make or break if they will want to come to see it or not. I will show you how to make your house look perfect for the photographer so people are seeing your home in the best light possible.