Selling your home as quickly as possible at the highest price (preferably in a cash offer) is every home seller’s dream. Thankfully, there are a lot of simple things you can do to get your home ready to sell that can help you accomplish these goals.
The best approach is to employ the art of home staging.
What Is Home Staging?
Home staging is a way of presenting your home in the best possible light by a pleasing arrangement of furnishings, decorations, and accessories to help potential buyers develop an emotional attachment and desire to buy your home.
Proper staging makes your home appear to be more spacious, more valuable, and more desirable. When homes are staged well, many realtors agree that sellers often sell their homes more quickly and are more likely to get higher offers (1-10% higher) than they would if the home were not staged.
If you are interested in pricing your home to get top dollar when you sell, staging may be one of the best ways to find the highest offers.
We’d like to share our 7 favorite tips for home staging so you can sell your home quickly to prospective buyers:
1. Deep Clean Everything
Want to sell your home fast? It’s got to be clean. Some people can look past grime, dirt, dust, and stains to see that hidden potential in a home. But most people can’t.
Make it easy for people to enjoy being in your home by doing a thorough spring cleaning in every room in the house and outside, as well.
2. Go on a Decluttering Spree
When you are staging a home to sell quickly, it’s critical to declutter. Most people live with some degree of clutter in their home on a daily basis. But when people want to buy a new place, clutter is distracting and even worse than that, it is off-putting.
Clutter makes a place feel smaller, junkier, and less valuable than it really is. It makes it hard for people to emotionally bond with a place.
So box up (and put in storage away from your house) anything you don’t absolutely need while you are marketing your home. This is a great time to throw away things you won’t need anymore and give away quality items that are no longer useful to you. Then you’ll have less to store and less stuff to move into your new place.
Be sure to clear out the closets, drawers, and storage spaces of anything non-essential because people will be opening all the cabinets and drawers to see how much storage they could get if they buy your home.
If your things are well-organized and there is empty space, they will feel like the home offers them plenty of storage space.
3. Depersonalize Everything You Can
Potential buyers don’t want to see a home that belongs to you. They want to dream about a home that belongs to them.
Things like family photos, religious paraphernalia, team merchandise, and other personal items make buyers feel like they are in your space. Take down paintings or portraits that scream your personality and replace them with a few neutral, broadly appealing decorations.
When you are trying to sell your home, make it as easy as possible for people to picture living there, themselves. Help them to fantasize about the potential for them to love your home.
4. Maximize Natural Lighting and Artificial Lighting
Photographers know that great lighting makes a huge difference in how appealing a space looks. If you want to sell a home fast, staging a house should involve using all the possible lighting at your disposal.
Natural lighting
Open all the blinds and curtains when you show your home and when you have professional pictures made. Let natural light bathe your home, letting in all the mood-enhancing sunlight.
Artificial lighting
This is also a great time to get rid of old, broken, or dated light fixtures. Replace them with something modern-looking that complements your home.
Increase your bulb wattage with LED light bulbs so that rooms and closets are well-lit. Burned out bulbs and dark spaces are not attractive. Add lamps and accent lights to brighten up your space and be sure all the lights are on when you show your home.
5. Focus on the Important Rooms First
Some aspects of staging your home apply to all rooms: cleaning, lighting, and making sure there is no remotely offensive odor.
But every room doesn’t need the same level of attention with other aspects of staging. As far as arranging the furniture, depersonalizing, and adding appealing decor, just a few rooms need the most attention if you want to really wow buyers.
The most important rooms in your home to stage when selling your house
- Kitchen
- Master bedroom
- Living room
- Dining room
6. Add Freshness Here and There
Go through your home, and add some new touches. Replace old throw pillows with fresh new ones. Add live flowers or a healthy plant or two to several key rooms.
Refresh your beds with new comforters, bedspreads, or duvet covers. Stock the bathroom with fresh, fluffy bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths.
7. Boost Curb Appeal
First impressions are everything. At business meetings. When going on a date. And, yes, when seeing a home. You only get one chance to hit buyers with eye-popping looks from the street.
When realtors want to sell homes fast, they understand the impact of great curb appeal ideas.
If you are interested in finding a buyer right away, the front of your home and your front yard should be in good condition.
A few ways to reach quick curb appeal heaven
For your home:
- Paint your front door a welcoming shade like red, blue, teal, or another eye-catching color that goes along with your home’s exterior colors.
- Get a beautiful new welcome mat.
- Add a few potted flowers or window flower boxes to your front porch.
- Install new hardware on your front door that has personality and pizzazz.
- Replace worn furniture cushions and throw pillows with fresh ones.
For your front yard:
- Manicure your lawn, bushes, and trees.
- Put down new mulch and plant some fresh flowers.
8. Neutrals Are a Huge Key to Success
When you want to sell a home, it’s important to try to appeal to as many people’s tastes as possible. Yes, someone might like a very bold color all over the kitchen. Or, more likely, it may just look like a time-consuming repainting project to them if that is not their color.
Right now, the most popular neutrals are grays, beiges, whites, and creams. Interestingly, some blues and greens are beginning to be desirable, too.
Home Staging Cost
Real estate agents recommend staging your home to sell more quickly and for a higher price. There are two main ways to do this:
- Do it yourself home staging.
- Home staging companies with a professional stager.
The average cost to stage a home if you do it yourself can be fairly minimal. Maybe a few hundred dollars, depending on the materials you decide to buy.
If you go with a professional staging company, you can expect to spend more.
From Home Advisor:
“œThe national average home staging cost is $1,318. This includes furniture and decoration rental. Many homeowners pay between $557 and $2,093. Full furniture rentals can cost $6,000 or more for extended periods.”
Bonus Tip
One more tip when you want to sell your home fast in this digital age:
Hire a Great Professional Photographer
Most prospective buyers will view your home online first or maybe only online. So your home’s pictures need to be top-notch to capture buyers’ attention and emotions when you are selling your home.
Ready to Stage a Home for Sale and Build Your New Lexington, SC Dream Home?
Blythe Building Company is an award-winning luxury home builder in the Greater Columbia area with over 16 years of experience. We have built over 100 custom homes in this area so you can have the peace of mind that we can provide a quality experience for you.
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