Is Your Home Ready to Sell?

Take a look at the photo to the right. Does your home have this look about it? If not, you are headed toward making your move more difficult than it needs to be. And, you may not get the sale price you deserve. The key to this room is that it looks cozy, but it is easy for visitors to picture themselves living there.

What is Home Staging?

Home Staging is growing in popularity. As any REALTOR® will tell you, first impressions make a big difference to buyers. The objective of home staging is to present your home in the best possible light, and to make it stand out from the rest. It creates a setting that inspires the visitor to visualize themselves residing in the home.

In addition to selling faster and at a higher price, a Staged home typically sells better regardless of the state of the real estate market.

How Is Home Staging Accomplished?

Existing furnishings can be used in new and exciting ways. Updated and colorful accessories can be added to make a significant difference. The entire home can be Staged using rented furniture and accessories. This approach is particularly useful for some or all of the rooms in a vacant home.

1. Open the drapes and blinds. Sunshine is the world's best decorator and nothing is more depressing than walking into a home where shades, curtains and drapes are closed. The buyer is likely not a character out of Wind in the Willows and will leave with the impression of a dark and claustrophobic property.

2. Wash the windows - inside and out. For the same reasons as above, no other small improvement will give you more bang than this.

3. Clean up the yard. You've heard of curb appeal? How about unseen from the curb? Cut back overgrown shrubs, particularly those that obscure windows or make it difficult to get to the front door. Mow the grass. Rake or pick up downed leaves and branches. Put away lawn tools, kids' toys and discard or store any outdoor furniture that is rusty or ragged. If season and funds permit, put down some colorful annuals or put a few nicely planted containers on or near the front porch.

4. Clutter Control. You have heard this a thousand times, but de-cluttering and organizing a home is very important and not just to make the place look neat. A cluttered home looks smaller and less airy. All of the pictures, knick-knacks, even an exquisite art collection are distracting to many buyers. The agent is trying to point out the gas log in the fireplace and the customer is studying your collection of old ink wells on the mantle.

Also, you want to make room for the buyers own things. If the living room is jammed with furniture the buyer might not be able to figure out where his own stuff will go. It does no good to explain that your stuff won't be there when he moves in. Some people just can't visualize. If you can't get rid of some of your home clutter- house plants for example - round them up and make a single display rather than have them in dribs and drabs through a room or the whole house. The rule of thumb: count every item in each room - furniture, books, vases, old birthday cards propped up on the shelf - and pack up or eliminate 50% of them. Then, if there is time and energy, get rid of 50% of the remainder.

5. Clean your kitchen and bathrooms - Scrub like crazy, particularly the kitchen and bath(s). The kitchen may be old but it can still sparkle. Clean the stovetop with a good degreaser and all countertops with whatever it takes to remove stains and discoloration. Wash the front of all cupboards and appliances and keep the floor swept and scrubbed for the life of the listing. De-clutter here too, especially the refrigerator door (death by a thousand knives for the inventor of the refrigerator magnet). Ditch countertop appliances, canisters, etc and keep cupboard doors and drawers closed if your hand is not actually in them. It is critical that the bathrooms sparkle. Old bathrooms can be charming and a new shower curtain or fresh flowers on the counter may be all you need. Put out your best towels and, if you have young children, please enforce the flush rule. Clean bathrooms are a must.

Now we are getting into the more expensive staging suggestions, but the next few things will really help you prepare your house to sell if they are needed and you can afford to do them.

6. Refinish hardwood floors. These are a major selling point when selling your home and sometimes a home's most compelling feature. Often they don't need complete refinishing, just to be roughed up and polyurethane applied to obtain that killer shine. If yours are looking tough give a couple of pros a call and check out the price. In some markets several rooms can be extensively refinished for less than $1,000.00.

7. Paint / Repaint Your Home. If your taste in decorating is a bit, shall we say strong, it may pay you to hire a professional to tone down some of the more dramatic color rooms. Many people love dark red dining rooms, but none of them may be looking at your house. Neutral colors are best for marketing your home for sale. There was a house, a very expensive house, in a "bubbly" Boston suburb that was on the market for a year and with a total of four agents. The house was in a wonderful neighborhood, had a traditional floor plan and a beautiful yard, but every room and every ceiling was papered in a different black and white pattern. Moving from one room to the next induced vertigo. Agent after agent tried to convince the seller to invest four or five thousand dollars in a professional redo (two of them got fired for suggesting it) but the owner would not budge. A sharp-eyed investor finally picked it up well below its original listing price, did the remodel and sold it three months later for a substantial profit.

8. Buy, borrow or rent what you need. If your furniture shows the effect of raising five kids or if pets have ruined the rugs and upholstery think about storing or getting rid of your existing furniture and finding just enough more attractive stuff to get by. If your nest is empty and the kids' rooms are beaten up, throw out the furniture, give the walls a quick wash coat of paint and put one or two small flea market pieces - a hobby horse, a bean-bag chair, the old bassinette from the attic - in the room to merely "suggest" its use. A rocker, table lamp and a pile or books in an otherwise bare room gives it the feel of a cozy study and so forth. If you want to go all out there are dozens of companies, some of them national, that will rent a roomful or a houseful of furniture on short term contracts. Not cheap, but maybe worth looking into.

If your house has a lot of competition in the market you need to measure up. Think of it as show biz.