What to know about staging your home - Pro Tip
You’ve done your market research, carefully pricing your home and familiarizing yourself with the steps of a sale. But how much do you know about home staging? If your home is already in good shape, you might be wondering if it’s even important to stage. Simply put: Yes. A 2015 survey by the National Association of Realtors found that 81% of Realtors representing buyers say that staging helps the buyer to visualize the house as their home, and can add 1% to 10% to the final sale price. Just 4% of surveyed Realtors responded that staging has no impact on the sale. Those numbers speak for themselves, so let’s get started.
Remember the Curb Appeal
Before you any buyer can appreciate the recently remodeled kitchen or fresh tile in the bathroom, they have to be intrigued by the home’s exterior. If you’re lucky, your home’s impressive, unique architecture will be enough to draw in potential buyers. But odds are, you’ll need to give it a little TLC to make your lived-in abode look newly alluring. Take a pressure washer to the sidewalks, place some potted plants or windowboxes to give the entry some greenery, repaint the front door, and replace aging fixtures to set the stage.
Tend to the Lighting
Ample lighting is key to making your house look inviting, modern, and homey. Place lamps in dark corners and rooms, and pull down the drapes to let the natural light flood in. Use this opportunity to even potentially replace some outdated fixtures for the new potential owners — they will appreciate the fresh touches.
Add Color
Pops of color will help the buyers to remember what they’re seeing. When they go home, will they remember that stark-white living room, void of furniture save for one taupe couch? Or will they remember the living room with a teal throw pillows, a colorful rug, and eye-catching art on the walls? Toe the line carefully, however, because adding too much color can make a previously classy apartment turn garish in an instant.
Consider the Lifestyle
When you’re selling your home, you’re selling more than just a shell in which people sleep and store their things — you’re selling, essentially, the locus of a life. Keep that in mind as you furnish the home for buyers. Place chairs on the porch from which to appreciate the front yard. Set a fresh bouquet on the kitchen table. One professional recommends setting the scenes in each room to represent a series of lifestyle vignettes: lay out an ongoing boardgame in one room, a stack of classic books in the study, or perhaps fresh, fluffy, folded towels in the laundry room.
Above all, when you’re staging your home, focus on the buyer: what they want to see, what they need to consider, and how they want to live. If you can help your potential buyers envision the lives they will lead in your home, your bottom line will reap the benefit.
Sam Radbil is a contributing member of the marketing and communications team at ABODO, an online apartment marketplace. ABODO was founded in 2013 in Madison, Wisconsin. And in just three years, the company has grown to more than 30 employees, raised over $8M in outside funding and helps more than half a million renters find a new home each month.
