Staging a home to sell is one of the most crucial aspects to consider when putting a home on the market. In today's housing market, even first time homebuyers have high expectations- after all, it seems everyone watches HGTV's Designed to Sell and other real estate shows.
Realtors are faced with two choices when putting their seller's home on the market. Keep the home in the same condition you find it; in other words, how the seller has lived in their home. Or, raise the bar by putting the home in top condition to sell the home.
How do you do this? You learn from these shows and aspire to stage a home like the pros. Here's an example of where we've staged a home's fireplace area of the family room. Before - left photo, you'll note that the fireplace area is bland- no, it's not Christmas despite the silver and gold trees on the mantel. While this homeowner has terrific accessories throughout their home, this is a cold and sterile photograph and area of the home- not very inviting for prospective homebuyers.
The photo on the right shows the same area after we have done some simple staging...while still not the perfect print (we prefer more color) on the mantel, we found this part of a set and used this over the mantel to bring the eye up more to notice the high ceilings in the this and for better scale. Additionally, we used it's companion piece over the sofa (not shown) to further unify the family room. Additionally, we found some darker small accessoriess to place on the mantle and used an odd-number of items rather than placing identical items on either end of the print. Also note that we moved a display curio and plant into the corner to warm up the area and make it pop in the photos. We even found a basket to put on the hearth and a different cushion with more contrast for the stuffed chair. The phone outlet is no longer in the photo.
How much did we spend staging this part of the home? Zero. Nada. We just took the homeowners' existing furniture and accessories and placed the items here for maximum effect. We also used a few of our own staging items that we keep in storage to use as needed. So next time you're walking thru a home, use your creativity to get a bigger impact, a quicker sale and at a higher sales price!
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