Staging Secrets to Sell Your Home Quickly
As you get ready to sell your home, you know you want to do everything you can to help it sell as quickly as possible.
While a big remodel might not be feasible at this point, a few simple tweaks to the way your home looks can make a big difference. Even in a hot market, proper staging of your home can make a big difference in how quickly it sells.
Our tips should help your home look more attractive to prospective buyers. Take advantage of the following staging secrets, and you’ll be likely to sell much quicker.
- Clean Up the Exterior of the Home
- Remove Extra Furniture
- Get a Storage Unit
- Keep Surfaces Clutter-Free
- Add a Fresh Coat of Paint
- Keep the Master Bedroom Neutral
- Use Space Wisely
- Give Unused Rooms a Purpose
- Deep Clean the Home
- Tidy Up the Closets
- Think About the Seasons
- Look at the Small Things
- Create a Lifestyle
Clean Up the Exterior of the Home
You’ve undoubtedly heard about the importance curb appeal plays in selling a home. If people don’t like the way your home looks from the outside, they might not want to spend time looking at the inside. The good news is that it doesn’t take much to freshen up the exterior of a home.
Rent a power washer to clean the outside of the home. This is an easy DIY project. You can also spruce up your landscape by adding some flowers and plants and making sure the grass looks tidy at all times. Some people even choose to have a professional landscaper come in to make things look even better. If you have one, adding some fun decor to your patio can be an eye-catching factor.
Remove Extra Furniture
A room packed full of furniture will feel smaller than it is, and that will make it harder to sell. Take out unnecessary pieces of furniture – the extra chair in the living room, the big bookshelf in your bedroom, and the leaf in the dining room table.
Sometimes, doing this means you need to slightly rearrange the furniture that remains. Your rooms will look so nice, you’ll wonder why you never thought to do this before.
People often think placing furniture against the walls is the best way to make a room look bigger, but this isn’t necessarily the case. That’s why you don’t often see this in design magazines.
Instead, pull your furniture into the centre of the room if the size of your home size permits. This is especially true in the living room. Of course, your bedroom headboard can stay against the wall, but if you have a bed pushed into the corner with one side touching the wall, you may want to rethink that decision.
Or, another option...
Get a Storage Unit
As mentioned, a home with a lot of furniture and other stuff can feel cramped, so you want to get all the extra things out of there. In fact, some experts recommend removing as much as half of the stuff you have taking up space in each room.
So in the living room, (that extra chair), the kitchen (all those small appliances), and so on, removing those pieces completely. It’s sometimes hard to make these choices because you’re emotionally attached to all of your items or really like them, but others might not like the look. Storage units are inexpensive and a great place to keep your belongings until you can move into your new home.
An added bonus? It makes moving day much easier, as you already have many items packed up and ready to go!
Keep Surfaces Clutter-Free
Your real estate agent already advised you to remove the clutter from your home, but you may not have done as good of a job as you think. Clutter isn’t just the piles of unopened mail or toys in the wrong spot. It’s anything that’s taking up space on your surfaces.
For instance, on the kitchen counters, you should put away your collection of cookbooks, the containers of flour and sugar, and most of the small appliances. In the bathroom, you don’t want things like toothbrushes and toothpaste, toiletries, or razors sitting out in the open. Even the kids’ desks should have a clutter-free surface. Hide the things you might need in a box in the closet.
Add a Fresh Coat of Paint
You might love bold colours, but when you’re trying to sell your home, you want it to appeal to as many people as possible. Ideally, you should repaint the walls using neutral colours in cool tones.
Cool tones like grey rather than the warmer beige help the home feel more spacious and inviting. Remember neutral doesn’t just mean white. There are a wide variety of colours that can act as a nice backdrop to any home.
Even if you aren’t currently using bold colours, fresh paint will cover up the scuff marks and dings your walls have collected over the years. Pay special attention to high traffic areas in your home.
Keep the Master Bedroom Neutral
Buyers want a home they can imagine themselves in, and while you might love your floral bedspread, others might think it looks dated or too feminine. Logically, anyone who buys your home isn’t going to have to live with your bedspread, but people are making an emotional decision when they buy.
If you already have a fairly neutral design to the master bedroom, you don’t have to change a thing. Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with a crisp, white bedspread and some art on the walls.
Use Space Wisely
Most likely, you have some spaces in your home that have become a catch-all for things you’re not using. This could be the basement, a guest room, or a seemingly awkward niche in the living room. Show ways you can use these spaces.
The basement should be well-organized, with shelving for storing things off the floor. An extra bedroom could be a guest room or a home office. That little nook could fit a rolling bar cart. These little ideas can make a big difference.
Give Unused Rooms a Purpose
People often have a room or two that aren't really used. It might be the formal dining room that ends up being the drop-off zone for school papers or the place to fold laundry. Guest bedrooms often act as storage rooms. While potential buyers can use their imaginations to envision what these rooms could look like, it’s better to do the work for them.
Consider setting the dining room table for a holiday meal. Turn the guest room into a home office. People want to see how they can use the home and no one ever thinks they need a separate room to dump things.
Deep Clean the Home
Just before you put your home on the market, do a deep clean of the home. Wash the carpets or have hardwood floors refinished. Organize your closets because people will look in them, and a messy closet looks small. Be sure to dust uncommon areas, like the baseboards and the door frames.
Those who have pets need to make sure that there are no pet odours around. Once your home is clean, you have to keep up. You never know when someone will want to schedule an appointment to look at it.
Tidy Up the Closets
We often use closets to stash things we don’t want people to see, but all of your potential buyers are going to open up the closet doors. Remove out-of-season clothes so the closet doesn’t look crowded.
Make sure your clothes are hanging neatly, all facing the same direction. If you have boxes in the closets, they should be organized.
Think About the Seasons
Stage your home for the current season. There are great reasons to sell your house in the summer. If it is summer or even spring, for instance, you want to make sure that your yard looks nice (consider some summer landscaping) and that there’s a nice spot for entertaining outside, like a decorated patio or deck.
Many people also see great reasons to buy a new home in the fall. So if you're trying to sell in the fall, or perhaps into winter, make sure to rake leaves or keep snow out of the driveway and walkways. Also, ensure you have taken the proper steps to winterize your home. A fire pit outside or a fireplace inside could set a tone that shows people what their life might look like if they owned your house.
Look at the Small Things
You want your home to feel fresh and inviting. Swap out knick-knacks for vases of flowers or small potted plants. Use a centrepiece on your table, and put something pretty on your mantelpiece. Little touches like this make a home feel lived in and cared for.
Replacing the cabinet pulls or lighting fixtures is a good way to make the home feel updated without spending a lot of money. If something in your home looks outdated, you want to fix that so potential buyers aren’t thinking about all the major changes they’ll have to make.
Create a Lifestyle
Most importantly, you want to appeal to buyers by offering them a sense of what their life could look like if they buy your home. Think about what makes your home special and play up those attributes.
For instance, if you have a gorgeous front porch, put two rocking chairs out there, along with a pitcher of lemonade. People can imagine relaxing there and saying hi as the neighbours walk by.
If your home has a sleek, modern look, show the ways you’ve incorporated technology into the design. These details help potential buyers imagine themselves living in your home.
Little things make a big difference when it comes to selling your home. Potential buyers don’t want to look at the space and see all of the changes they’ll have to make. They want a place that feels move-in ready. Our tips will help you set the right tone and make your home attractive to buyers, but this is just one piece of the puzzle. A good realtor can help you price the home right and find the right buyer for your home.
Originally posted May 10, 2018, updated May 28, 2019.
