Staging a home for selling...any tips?

[ForTheLoveofDisney]

I'm a bit clueless about staging a home for selling. I like to watch the shows on t.v. that deal with just this subject and I always think that the results are great but I know I don't have the vision to come up with those great ideas?

Now that DH are planning a sell/move I find myself needing to stage my home.

Have any of you ever actually hired a professional home stager?

If you did it yourself where are some of the places --i.e. websites, books, videos-- that you went to for inspiration.

Do you have any tips that really made a difference in your sale?

I want to make it look as best as possible but I also don't want to spend a small fortune doing so. That kind of defeats the purpose. I notice on those shows that they show the price they put into fixing it up at the end and I think it is really reasonable and I think the idea they are trying to get across is with a little money and alot of elbow grease you can accomplish great things.

So, what are your tips?

TIA

 

[justplaingoofy]

Box up and move all unnecessary items and keep house from looking cluttered. If you have a fair amount of personal photos take them down.. You want people to be able to picture themselves in your home, not feel like they are intruding in someone elses home.
If you have alot of furniture try to move some out so that the rooms look bigger.
Advertise in the local newspaper and put a for sale on your lawn. Alot of times neighbors may know of someone that is looking for a house.
If you know of any defects with your house that has not been fixed and they specifically ask about it, you must tell them the truth.

*Know the value of your home* and contact a real estate lawyer that can draw up a purchase & sales agreement, deed, and will be willing to hold the escrow, etc.
If you have an open house bake some cookies before you open your home up. The smell is inviting and makes people feel "homey". You can also purchase a yankee candle that is cookie scented. Avoid lighting too many candles with different smells.
If you have anything of value, lock it up and put it away... unfortunately, not everyone is honest and its an open invitation to walk through your home....if you have more than a couple of people at one time keep in mind that some of them will be unattended making it a good opportunity for someone to go through your things.

Make up a flyer and bring it around to local real estate offices and tell them if they find a buyer you will give them 2.5% commission. (better than paying the full 5-6%) and they will bring the buyer not going through another real estate company.

I'm sure some people will agree & some will disagree with what I've said.... This is what "I" would do when selling my own home. (and I did a couple years ago)

 

[JessetheCowgirl]

I think the biggest thing that makes a HUGE difference is to CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN and then clean again. Everything should be spotless. Steamclean the carpets.

Spruce up the front entry----clean the porch/steps/door. Repaint the front door if needed. Put out some potted flowers. Put out a new welcome mat.

Get rid of clutter. Including in closets.

When you show the house, turn on all lights and open all blinds/drapes to let the light in.


Good luck!

 

[disneymcgraw]

I agree with the decluttering advice. Try to make the rooms open and spacious. Clean like it's the first time your mother in law will be coming over lol.

Good luck...

 

[ForTheLoveofDisney]

Clean like it's the first time your mother in law will be coming over lol.

Something clicked when I read that statement. It was like "Ah-ha!" I remember that time WAY too well and I was a cleaning fool!! I was cleaning in the corners and crevices. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing down under the cabinets. I was wiping down the tops of the doors (like she could reach up there with her white glove ) I haven't cleaned like that in a long time.

justplaingoofy and JessetheCowgirl thank you so much for your advice. I wouldn't have thought of the cookies but what a great idea! Comforting and inviting!

Thanks for the tips. . .keep 'em coming.

 

[minniecarousel]

Will this be a "For Sale By Owner"? If not, your realtor should have some great suggestions for showing your home. Ours had us get all the cobwebs out of the upper reaches of our front porch, plant some bright flowers out front and yes - de-clutter!!

 

[FreshTressa]

We emptied our house except for two pieces of furniture and 3 accessories per room. Plus, fresh towels and just one decoration per bathroom.

There is almost NOTHING on my kitchen counters and it looks sooo much bigger.

 

[ForTheLoveofDisney]

Will this be a "For Sale By Owner"?

No, we will be listing through a realtor. We have not contacted them yet. My DH and I didn't know if we do what we think first and then contact them or just contact them and have them walk through like it is and give us suggestions. We've never done this before and we've really been discussing it today.

 

[EthansMom]

We've successfully sold our last two homes very quickly; in one week for more than asking price on home #1 and in one week for just less than asking price for home #2.

I agree with the other posters. The biggest thing you can do is clean and declutter. Go through each room and get rid of anything that you would get rid of when you move, anyway: old clothes, furniture, papers, toys, junk in the yard, etc... We spent weeks just decluttering each house. Then, clean the dickens out of the house, top to bottom. Then, decide if there's any maintenance you need to do: repair broken items, touch up paint, etc. Don't worry about remodeling dated bathrooms or anything major.

Once, you've gotten rid of the clutter, cleaned, and fixed maintenance issues, do what you can to make the house feel generally "homey". In our first house, there weren't any built-in light fixtures and the house felt dark. We went out and bought several different inexpensive lamps. We checked each light in the house and made sure that we were using the highest allowable watt bulbs. We hung a large mirror in the livingroom to add the impression of even more room and light. Then, before a showing, I would go through the house and turn on every light (this was during the winter). Boy, that house felt warm and cozy with every light glaring. We also got those "plug-in" air deoderizers that were vanilla scented and used them in different rooms throughout the house -- not enough to be annoying, but added the smell of baking without the mess.

In our second house, we had an unattractive multicolored carpet throughout much of the house. The carpet wasn't half bad in most of the house, but didn't look too great in the livingroom which had great views and lots of light -- the carpet just looked too informal. When we first started thinking about selling the house, we had our realtor take a look at it and she pretty much insisted that we needed to replace the carpet, which was only a few years old. Instead of spending thousands on new carpet, we bought a solid, cream-colored area rug for a couple hundred dollars. When we finally went to put the house on the market a few months later, the realtor didn't even remember having had a bad opinion about the carpet in the livingroom and thought it looked great. Again, in the second house, we made sure that paint was touched up, used electric air fresheners, and we got rid of the nasty-smelling diaper bucket.

I don't think you need to hire someone to "stage" your house. Get a few home magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and flip through them to get ideas on how they've staged those homes -- no clutter on surfaces, no toaster on the kitchen counter, not too too many family pictures, etc...

So, a few things that may be worth the investment: a few coats of paint, if and where necessary; lamps and/or higher-watt lightbulbs; air freshener; repairing minor maintenance issues; some inexpensive plants in the front yard; a nice plant or flowers for your diningroom table.

When you're selling your house, it should be the cleanest it has been since you bought it. You are selling the buyers the delusion that if they lived in this house, they too could keep it just as clean.

If you're looking to sell rather quickly and painlessly, get an experienced real estate agent and let him/her know that you are interested in selling the home quickly. IMO, many people are interested in making a few thousand dollars more instead of SELLING the house. An experienced agent can run the comps and tell you exactly what your house is worth -- price it accordingly.

Something that we did when we sold our last house that worked VERY well and we will do again with any future homes we have to sell and I HIGHLY recommend: When we had the house completely ready for the market and our agent had everything lined up to put the house on the MLS, we left town for the first week of the home being on the market. We had given our agent a couple week's notice that this is what we planned -- we wanted to be out of the house for the first week the house was on the market and wanted her to get as many people to look at the house during that time as possible.

We had a toddler and an infant, at the time. Instead of worrying about keeping the house clean and worrying if someone would want to see the house during naptime or dinner, we went on vacation. Yes, our house sold while we were away on vacation. Our agent had all of our contact information and we checked in with her for status updates every couple of days. We had an acceptable offer before we ever came home from our trip.

Good Luck selling your home!

 

[Rafiki Rafiki Rafiki]

That's a good idea about leaving the home.

We've put about $20K into renovations on our home to get the house up to market. This house has had a history of selling below market because of amenities not in the home, so we're aware of what we're getting into.

It's like my realtor said. Paint is cheap and can hide a WORLD of indiscretions. All our house lamps outside, for example, were brass and were beginning to rust. Rather than purchase 9 new ones at $30-$50 each, I took them apart and spray painted them. They look great.

We borrowed a pressure washer and did the patio and front walkway. What a change! I also put a fresh coat of paint on the doorways throughout the house. They were white and had little people stains and marks all over them. I scrubbed every baseboard and have cleaned places I didn't THINK could get dirty!

We're getting ready to list in the next two weeks...at $130K above what we purchased for 2 years ago!

 

[ForTheLoveofDisney]

Thank you, EthansMom (and Molly's too)!
These are terrific ideas! Thank you so much for taking the time to compose such a well thought out response. I had to call DH in here so that he could read it too.

We too have multi-colored carpet throughout the house. We didn't put it in here it was here when we bought it but the price was right!! It was a great house that was a foreclosure. The previous inhabitants spent alot of money on paving our very long driveway, doing extensive landscaping to the front yard, fencing in the backyard and putting up a pool. Then they got divorced and the house went into foreclosure. They took the pool with them. The carpets are a different color in every room and the paint was horrible. The room I'm in now was PURPLE (like darker and deeper than Barney the Dinosaur purple) wall and ceiling. It was so dark in here that I had to have hallogen lamps burning in the day just to paint it with primer. The other bedroom was gray which wasn't too bad. The living room with our 14ft. cathedrial ceiling was Colonial Blue walls and ceiling (felt like you were walking in a tomb) and the carpet (which was new) was rose color. The master bedroom has a green carpet and the walls were painted peach with a very bad border that went around the walls and UP OVER the door casing. It was bizarre!! We promptly painted the entire house a neutral cream!! Our furniture happens to complement the living room carpet and now it doesn't look bad at all. Not what I would have chosen but you would never know it. I still don't like the multi-color carpet throughout the house and if I had my choice it would all be a neutral color carpet or hardwood floor. Oddly we got used to it and never got around to changing them. We've been here just shy of 5 years. At first DH was saying we need to replace all the carpets, repaint all the rooms and put new linoleum down. I just don't know what to do. I think I've heard that you don't go and spend thousands of dollars on repairs putting in what you think should go in when in all honesty a good cleaning and strategic placing of furniture and accessories would do the trick. I mean I've seen some of those carpets on "Sell This House" on A&E channel that I thought looked a hot mess but then they change the color on the walls or in one episode they brought in a carpet stretcher to take the rolling bumps out of the carpet and it looked fine and the homes sold.
Now, when you say you bought an area rug, did you put it right over the carpet in there?

Something that we did when we sold our last house that worked VERY well and we will do again with any future homes we have to sell and I HIGHLY recommend: When we had the house completely ready for the market and our agent had everything lined up to put the house on the MLS, we left town for the first week of the home being on the market. We had given our agent a couple week's notice that this is what we planned -- we wanted to be out of the house for the first week the house was on the market and wanted her to get as many people to look at the house during that time as possible.

This is a GREAT idea! I never would have thought about that either.

 

[TammyAlphabet]

I put a pan of water on the stove with a couple of cinnamon sticks in it and brought the water to boiling. The smell was wonderful and not messy.

 

[DisnyMama]

My home is in escrow right now. The two most important things that I did was de-clutter and make sure the house was clean. I got a lot of compliments from people on how clean my home was and this made me very proud, especially considering that I am not a clean freak. I am not obsesive about it but I do not like a dirty house either. I dust when it is absolutely necessary. I was very lucky in that I got an offer for $1000 under my asking price within 24 hours after we went on the market. Most of the homes around here are averaging about $5000 less. I know not to count my chickens till they have gotten to closing day though.

 

[ceiligh1]

I would talk with your realtor as you might not have to do some of the fix ups it depends on the area. We were going to replace tile and didnt need to. Also we had boxed up too much of our stuff, I am talking bare walls and mantle so I had to actually unpack a few things at the realtors sugestion to get it sale ready.

 

[Steamboat Marti]

All the advice here is good - I only have one small thing to add. I love the home shows and watch them all the time -- but when they spend $2,000; its not the same as if we spent $2,000. They spend $2,000 AND have two carpenters or contractors on the job. They never charge for labor. And if you remember -- labor is more expensive than the materials!! So that is more like spending $5k for the rest of us.

I wouldn't remove all the carpets and do all the linoleum... you may end up picking colors the next folks won't like anyway. Clean and make what you have the best that it can be. Cleaning and painting can go a long way.

 

[Imzadi]

If you get the A&E channel, they have two shows on Sunday around 4pm-7pm called, "Sell This House" & then "Flip This House." Both shows deal in what to do to either cosmetically improve the house, (first show,) or what structural stuff, like the vanity,will improve the house & bring in more money.

"Sell This House" is specially about staging homes. It airs like 4 half hour episodes, between 4-6, then 2 episodes of "Flip This House." Once you see a few episodes, you will get the idea right away of what to do.

It is amazing, on "Sell This House," they paint quite a bit, change out the curtains, rearrange or get rid of furniture, & even sometimes borrow neighbors' furniture, or rent furniture, for the open houses.

You may simply need to paint a neutralizing color on the walls and get a different color curtains, add fresh flowers or candles.
It's about giving prospective buyers ideas on how to use the space, as well as intentionally drawing focus toward or away from some areas.

On "Flip This House," knowing which structural item(s) to swap out & buy for $500 can raise the selling price by $1500.

 

[scifihippie]

We rented a storage room and took a lot of extra furniture, books and knick knacks there. We also pulled up all our floor rugs to show off our beautiful hardwoods. We had our realtor come through first to tell us what to send to storage and what to keep. B/c we hired movers to take it for us, I didn't want to have to do it twice. We also painted our front door to make it look new.

The hardest part is the constant maintenance. Everyday making sure the beds are not only made, but all the decorative pillows are on. The dishes are done, all DS toys and playmat are hidden away, litter box scooped before we leave for work, all the trash cans are empty, etc. It's tiring every morning to make it **** and span in case there's a showing. The market is slow in our area and I'm ready for it to sell! We've had 5 showings and are getting ready for our second open house.

 

[barkley]

our house closed memorial day weekend, it had an offer on it within 2 weeks of listing for full asking price (and the market has slowed considerably around here).

when we were ready to sell we interviewed area realtors to find the right person. we then cleaned the house top to bottom and had the realtor over to critique it-he pointed out the same minor repairs we had already planned to have done, and eliminated some of the others he did'nt think were necessary.

to prep. for showings we freshened up the yard by putting new bark in it and filling the planters with blooming flowers. we had the house and patios power washed, and had a company come in and wash the windows (in side and out) along with all the screens (cost less than $200 and made light flow throughout the house). i purchased a few low maintainance plants for the place, but the only "big" (around $350) purchase i made was a luxurious bed spread and pillows for the master bedroom (looked far too nice to sleep under, but it made the right impression). we decluttered and stowed everything in the garage (for the kid's rooms i bought each a large plastic christmas type storage bin with a lid-we put one in each closet. this way i could dash around the house in the event of a showing and toss all the toys and yugioh cards out of sight ).

i set up each of the patios neatly (made it look inviting with existing table and chairs), the front porch friendly (pot of flowering plants next to the new welcome mat) and put out only a few well chosen items on the kitchen counters (the room was ideal for entertaining so i got a hard crusted loaf of sour dough bread and placed it on a bread cutting board with a bread knife, put a couple of bottles of infused olive oil to lend to the idea).

i'm not big on scented items in the home (they give me a headache and i did'nt want a potential buyer to be turned off by a scent they did'nt care for) so i just went with a "clean" smell-windows open, nice and airy, hint of orange cleaner

if you have model homes near by you can walk through them and get ideas, you can also go on the mls for your area and see how your competition is staging their homes.

honestly, i realy don't think in the "real world" a serious buyer is turned off by personal pictures unless they overwhelm the home-most are looking at the floorplan and what they will have to do to get it the way they want it (and for some it may be a completly different flooring, window covering or paint color than you would chose-so if it is'nt a must to replace something i would'nt worry about it).

be realistic in your pricing and depending on how soon you want to sell-consider pricing it a bit lower than the competition, it may move it a lot faster and at a higher price than they will ultimatly get (we priced ours around 9K less than the others in our neighborhood-we got our price, their's are still sitting there now as much as 20K less than they were originaly asking).

 

[CJRN]

This is great!

We are not even close to selling, BUT I just put a pot of water on the stove with a few slices of apple & cinnamon sticks, and it sure smells nice in here.

 

[EthansMom]

Now, when you say you bought an area rug, did you put it right over the carpet in there?

Your house sounds like our first house -- a different weird paint color in every room!

Yes, we just put down an area rug over the middle of the carpet in the livingroom. It was a large off-white area rug that we purchased from home depot for $200-$300. It didn't cover the entire rug, but most of it, and completely changed the look of the room.

If that just isn't going to cut the mustard, you might consider replacing the carpet with something neutral in just one or two rooms, like the livingroom and/or masterbedroom.

Also, as Rafiki mentioned, in our first house, we spray painted several items that were unattractive. The medicine cabinet door in the spare bathroom got removed from the medicine cabinet, I spray painted the frame gold, and rehung the door as a mirror. The black wrought-iron stair railing just inside the entrance got sanded down and spray painted white. The neighbors two doors down had virtually the same house and begged to know what I'd done to our stair railing!

Good Luck!