Making your home stand out in the crowd

Today's challenge in marketing real estate is to set your home apart from the throng of homes being sold. Once you have reviewed the market with your realtor and priced your home properly, one of the best and most successful ways is to stage a home.  Your house is a product like any other product that needs to be marketed.  You are on the shelf and want the buyer to pick up your home instead of another.  A homeowner shouldn't take it personally as a comment on their style or way of life if a stager wants to make changes.  You need to present you house in its best light for the purpose of selling, which means appealing to the largest majority of buyers possible.  Once your house is on the market and open to viewing, its look is not of how you live there, but how the prospective consumer will feel in it.  It has to be inviting on many levels.  I like to appeal to all the senses.  Today's buyer is sophisticated and knowledgeable, and most are not prepared to do alot of work updating a tired looking home.  There are many ways to spruce up your home with what you have, and add a few inexpensive purchases to pull it all together.  Paint is the cheapest fix you can do to a home.  For $25 you can transform a room.  The old idea of neutralizing by painting white is a mistake.  Warm colors pull the buyer into a home and splashes of bright color in unexpected places can add needed pizzazz.  Don't be afraid to rearrange furniture to make rooms look larger and create flow in a room.  Each room should carry you to the next, both physically and visually.  Whatever your home's strengths are need to be showcased.  For example, if you have beautiful hardwood floors, make them shine and take away furniture so the buyer doesn't miss seeing the floor when they walk into the room.  And keep it simple by not imposing too much personal taste to your home.  Finally, the best favor you can do yourself when you want to sell, is DE-CLUTTER.  This is the time when less is more.