home reporter

As buyers become more and more choosy about the homes that they view and purchase, its becoming more and more important to prepare your home for sale 

Home staging, the process improving the visual impact of a home has become more important than ever.

The first principle of preparing your home for sale is de-cluttering and cleaning which can be done easily by the home owner without the expense of a professional home stager.

Cleaning is self-explanatory. Clean your home from top to bottom, every room, every corner, every closet. Surfaces should shine like they never have before. Try to think about your home being featured in a home magazine, how would you want it to look? That is essentially what is going to happen, the only difference being is that your home will be appearing online where it is available to seen by far more than the average readership of any magazine.

Clutter is the number one enemy of good home shows. Buyers do not want to see piles of your stuff lying around. This kind of thing gets in the way of buyers getting a feel for the home. Your home should be an entity unto itself without the encumbrance of your personal clutter getting in the way.

Each room in your home likely has a few things that could get in the way of a proper showing. When preparing your home for viewing it is good to pursue a minimalist concept but not to the point of making the rooms look sparse or cold. It is a delicate balance that can be difficult to achieve but don’t let that get in the way of taking the project on yourself

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You’ve put your house on the market and you’re now sitting around waiting for a buyer to  turn up.

Hopefully, you’ve chosen a good estate agent who is actively promoting your house. (If you’re unsure, you may need a mystery visit.)

But there are plenty of things you can do yourself, without costing a fortune. Sometimes the simple things are the best things and this is true when selling a home.

Think about things this way; most people when buying a home tend to think of things in two different ways. What they like, and what they will change. You can hear this kind of thing in any house viewing anywhere. People will walk through and mentally and verbally make changes to the home. No matter what you do as the owner, buyers will want to change things so the best thing you can do is give them a clean slate to work with.

Don’t panic. You do not need to remove everything from the home! What you might consider though, is the strategic removal of clutter and extra furniture. This will clear away distractions that could interfere with buyers being able to imagine themselves in the home and the changes that they might make.

Sometimes referred to as staging, this process is basically just making the home ready for a quick sale. It takes a keen eye to do this properly however. The problem is that your home is how you like it. It has your furniture, your art, your memories so it can be difficult to remove these things as they have sentimental value.

Try to think about the kind of thing that your average buyer will be looking for. They will be looking for things that are going to cost them large amounts of money - like structural repairs or a new kitchen. Or simple ‘finishing off’ projects and the biggest ’spring clean’ your house has ever had!

If you take the time to ensure that your home presents an impressive package then you should sell your house quickly at the full market price.

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property presentation

When staging flats for sale,  there are fundamental principles which MUST be applied. Too often sellers believe the art of home staging and flat staging is exactly the same thing. This way of thinking will cause them to make their FIRST mistake . . . which could result in their flat sitting along side countless others . . . long after the buyers have gone home!

The following is a list of additional mistakes to avoid when staging your flat for sale:

Think Square Footage - Many flats have limited space. When planning your furniture layout, instead of thinking square footage . . . think square inch, and make each one count!

Size Really Does Matter - When shopping for furniture focus on scale and proportion, NOT bigger is better! Oversized furniture may look great on the showroom floor, but when you get it home it will look much different.

Flex Areas - Flat living calls for carefully planned, creatively designed, multi-functional spaces known as flex areas. Because of the growing demand to meet the diverse needs of today’s flat buyer, more and more manufacturers are offering proportionately scaled, multi-purpose furniture to their lines. They include upholstered slipper chairs that fold out into guest beds, ottomans that serve as extra seating and storage, high-low tables that instantly transform from cocktail tables into dining tables for entertaining . . . just to name a few. And for the savvy targetted flat buyer, staging a multi media/home office area is always advisable.

Defining Spaces - Whether you prefer the clean, contemporary lines of ultra urban or the graceful warm feel of timeless traditional - remember to use COLOUR to define your spaces and create memorable WOW effects. Too often sellers believe that by keeping the walls neutral, it will make the limited space of a flat look larger. Actually the opposite is true. By bumping out a few accent walls with well chosen COLOURS you not only will add excitement to the room, but visually add depth, giving the illusion that the space is larger than it is.

Presentation Is Everything - Choose fewer, but larger, more dynamic artwork and accessories. This is one of the most frequently made mistakes by sellers who believe you should do quite the opposite. Just remember . . . scale down your furniture and scale up your artwork and accessories to successfully stage a flat with limited space. Your presentation and end result will certainly be more dramatic . . . and memorable!

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So, you decided to invest a few hundred dollars to prepare your house for sale. But how much should you budget? How much home staging is enough? And what are the top priorities?

These are the questions which I often encounter from clients. The answer is – it depends! Each house and each situation being unique, so is the approach to staging your property. But we’ll try to give you some general rules and tips to help you evaluate what needs to be done to sell your house quickly and for most money.

On average, you should plan to spend between 0, 5% and 1% of the property’s market price on fixing it up and staging it.

How do you decide where should your money go? A good starting point is to walk through your house and examine each room – be critical and objective.

If a room looks small, cluttered and/or unclean, put it on the “to do” list. If you notice things which need to be repaired, your visitors will too, so put the items to be fixed on the ”to do” list as well (cracked and chipped paint, dirty /old carpeting, broken door/closet handles, missing/broken lights, doors that don’t close properly, missing/broken tiles, etc). A clean, bright, spacey and freshly painted house is already an excellent start to your home staging project! Actually, you are 80% done at that point.

The rest are final touches which will take your property from ordinary to Wow. Depersonalizing, optimizing your living space, as well as adding a few tasteful accessories will insure that your house looks its best and is ready for dozens of potential buyers. If you can’t stage the whole house, focus on the main areas: entrance/hall (that’s where the first impressions start), Living room, Dining room, Kitchen and Master bedroom. If you are able to, stage a bathroom as well. Don’t forget the outside – make sure it looks clean and up kept.

In general, when staging, a golden rule is “Less is more”. It sounds obvious but it’s not, especially if you are living in the house. So, if in doubt, ask your realtor or a professional staging consultant to give you a hand – staging services are not very expensive, as a few hours of their time will usually suffice and it will be worth the money as it will come back to you many times over at the sale time.

Stage your house – sell your house!