| How to Show Off Your Home for Sale |
 You’re listing your home for sale and your Realtor® has helped you price it competitively. Now it’s time to get it ready to show! What can you do to help your Realtor® market your home more successfully?You may have heard the term “staging,” which really just means taking specific steps to make your home look more inviting to potential buyers who come and look at it. You see, we love our homes, but when we want to sell them, we have to take ourselves out of our homes so buyers will want to put themselves in them. And it pays off! Expert Barb Schwartz, author of the book Staging to Sell: The Secret to Selling Homes in a Down Market, estimates 95 percent of staged homes sell on average in 35 days or less. On the other hand, homes that are not staged take 172 days or more to sell, if they sell at all. Maybe you’ve seen some shows on HGTV that showcase home-makeover tips. Our tips are not as hard to implement! Your Realtor® can help you with some ideas. In addition, here are some tips from Detroit-based stager Shelly Wagner that are effective but low-cost: • Remove scatter rugs and knickknacks from every room. • Get rid of everything on the kitchen counters, including appliances, except for the coffee maker. • Remove as much as you can from closets. • Hire a cleaning service if necessary to make the house spotless. Scrub floors, walls and windows. Pay special attention to the microwave, oven and refrigerator. • Focus on the living, dining, and master bedrooms. Additional bedrooms are best left minimally furnished. • Arrange the furniture to show off each room’s best features. • Set the dining-room table with napkins, plates, and flatware. Lin Hill, a Realtor® in Springfield, Mo., has three goals when she looks to stage each room of a home for sale: • Depersonalize the space by taking everything off the refrigerator, remove most family photos, and remove posters and sports trophies from children’s rooms. • Maximize feelings of space and comfort by clearing high-traffic areas of excess furniture. • Highlight the key features in every room – such as fireplaces or French doors – by making sure they are not blocked by plants or furnishings. Hill adds that when it’s difficult to work on the whole house, a seller should start with the living room. “This is often the buyer’s first impression and can make or break the sale,” she said. Also, be sure to partially clear off built-in shelves, cabinets and countertops. “These are important features that need to be prominently displayed.” And finally she says, remember that removing clutter is a great stress reducer – in addition to a good way to get a head-start on packing! |
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