DIY Home Staging
You’re ready. You don’t want your home compared to a label-less can of creamed corn. What do I do now? In true Do-It-Yourself-er fashion, you can head over to Pinterest and start saving idea boards, but it really begins with two basic principles. Declutter and depersonalize.
Declutter
Home staging blows spring cleaning out of the water. Your home is about to get an HGTV makeover that will make you think twice about listing it. Just kidding, but really, when you organize correctly, it should make the space look even bigger.
Tip from the pros- rent a pod. No need to move your entire house multiple times. Pods are delivered straight to your driveway, you fill it at your convenience and then they come get it until you’re ready for it to be delivered to your new home. No multiple moving trucks or having to find someone who knows how to drive a stick shift.
Go through cabinets, closets and storage areas. You don’t need to pack everything away. It is actually preferred that you leave some items to use or ‘stage’ with. Instead of having your linen closet shoved full of beach towels, race car sheets, and wrapping paper, choose only your white towels with matching king size sheets. Fold them neatly, have them occupy a couple of shelves and have some small baskets accompany them. We want to show the use of the space in a minimalist way. You will go room by room and apply this tactic. In our house, the kitchen island is used as a catch all for school papers, mail and half empty water cups. In your home staging photo, it should be a clear space with a bowl of fruit or vase of flowers in the middle.
Depersonalize
When shoppers are looking at homes, they aren’t interested in the memories you made in this house. They want to be able to imagine their family making new memories in it. This means you want to remove your family photos, the kids art projects from the refrigerator, and your bowling trophies from the shelves in the man cave.
Tip from the pros- Remove anything affiliated with religion or politics. You don’t want to turn a buyer off who may have a different opinion on these hot topics. You’re not trying to lobby Congress, you’re trying to sell a house.
Professional Home Staging
You may have gotten halfway through our DIY section, looked around at your bachelor pad, where you are currently using a stack of pizza boxes as an entertainment center, and thought, can someone please help me? The good news it, YES! These are the pros that we referenced above who do this for a living. Simply ask your listing agent to recommend someone, and you can star in your own episode of “Stage This House”.
A professional home stager is going to come in and provide an initial design consultation. They will go room by room and let you know what you need to do on your end. They are, after all, a stager, not hired movers. Once your homework is complete, a stager will either use items that you already own or they may bring in some pieces to supplement, ie swap the pizza box tower for a mahogany console table. Professional home stagers are the same people who put together photo shoots for magazines, they know how to get the most out of their space and when you get your home feedback, they’re sure to make buyers swoon.
Does this fancy work come with a fancy price tag? Not really. Professional home staging will typically only run you a few hundred bucks. The small investment that has some big numbers behind it. Homes that have been professionally staged, increase the homes sales price by about 17% and tend to get a contract within the first few weeks vs months.
