Home staging is the art of preparing your house for buyers to view it. Involving a mixture of cleaning, redecorating and rearranging, it can increase the appeal of your unique property while removing distractions (like mess or clutter).
So where do you get started on something like this? Here are our 11 home staging tips for a fast sale.
Kerb appeal
Kerb appeal is exactly what it says it is: the appearance of your home as viewed from the kerb. Your home’s frontage is the first thing anyone sees when they arrive, so it’s one of the most important aspects to get right when staging.
1. Get everything clean and fresh
Remove moss, grime, rubbish and clutter from anywhere visible outside. From the moment someone steps into the driveway your home should appear as close to new as possible.
Learn more: Vital Home Maintenance Tips for Every Season
2. Replace the letterbox
How old and scabby does your letterbox look? Over the years, letterboxes can take a beating – rust forming, paint scratching, numbers falling off. It might be time to invest in a new one. It’s a small touch which can have a big impact.
3. Consider a new coat of paint
With all the grime cleaned off, you might see that your home still looks a little tired. If you’ve got the time and budget, a new coat of paint will give it that fresh new feel while also sealing the woodwork for years to come (saving a new buyer from doing it themselves).
Many home staging experts also advise repainting the front door with a bold or contrasting colour, for a pop of something exciting. Additionally, make sure to check that your curtains or blinds look clean and tidy from the outside (they may need replacing).
4. Check the lawn and garden
Let’s not let weeds get in the way of selling your home.
Make sure any lawn areas or flowerbeds are nice and tidy, free of weeds and in good condition. If it’s the right season, planting flowers will also help cheer up the outside of your house and add more colour.
Learn more: 4 Easy Steps to Getting Your House Ready to Sell
Furniture and the kitchen
5. Depersonalise and maximise space
You might love that Victorian chaise lounge but unusual items of furniture, bold or extravagant colours, and unique items of taste tend not to appeal to home buyers. Generally with furniture, you want things to be fairly un-personal, a blank canvas so that buyers can imagine what the space will be like with their own furniture in it.
Therefore, we need to depersonalise. Remove unique items of furniture, get rid of ornaments and photos and such, and consider renting neutral staging furniture for the duration of your home sale.
This is also a chance to move things around to maximise interior space. Avoid pushing furniture up against the walls, as creating pockets of ‘floating’ furniture around focal points (i.e. conversation spaces, or the fireplace) tends to feel more spacious. Consider also how traffic is meant to flow through the room, and leave pathways clear.
6. Modernise your kitchen
If you have the budget, how about modernising your kitchen? While you shouldn’t overspend here, swapping out battered old appliances for stylish modern alternatives can make a kitchen feel more exciting. The same goes for fixtures such as taps and even drawer or cupboard handles.
A new splash of paint then neutralises the space and brings out a contemporary colour theme, matching your new appliances.
Finally, look to see if that old backsplash needs cleaning (or updating!).
7. Declutter storage spaces
It might feel a little strange, but the reality of selling your home is that people are going to look through all the cupboards and drawers. Home buyers want to know that their new house will have plenty of storage, after all.
For this reason, it pays dividends to go through your storage spaces decluttering and tidying up. Anything messy should be reduced or reorganised (such as with new racks and drawer organisers), and all the nooks and crannies given a good clean.
Decor
8. Ensure good lighting
During viewings, try to ensure your home has tons of natural light by cleaning windows and opening up all the curtains and blinds.
Then, you can enhance that light by upgrading any dingy old lightbulbs to brighter alternatives. You may need to swap old lamps and fixtures for more modern (or less personal) styles, as well as clean lampshades of dust and the inevitable piles of dead moths.
9. Make your bathrooms look like a hotel suite
Everybody loves walking into a fancy hotel and seeing the nice, cottony white towels and all the little soaps. You can get that same feeling at home during your house viewings by following the same idea.
Add some fresh white linen to your bathrooms, and put new soaps on the sink. Ensure everything is sparkling clean in there, and, if relevant, replace old shower curtains with new ones.
10. Add splashes of colour
While most of your home’s interior should be painted in a neutral or off-white colour, except perhaps the occasional accent wall, that doesn’t mean you can’t have any colour at all.
Little bright pops in the form of flowers and a nice fruit bowl go well in a living space, while also feeling fresh and healthy. You might also add some artwork – of course, look for neutral, mass-appeal type art. Anything too specific or ‘weird’ may distract people from viewing the room itself.
11. Remove all traces of pets
You love your pets, but when staging your home new buyers might not.
As much as you can, reduce the amount of pet furniture in your home and remove any traces of animals, like toys, fur or litter trays. If your pets still have to live at your home while it’s being staged you may not be able to get rid of everything, but reduce it as much as possible and ensure it at least looks clean.
Learn more: What’s your house worth?
Need help? Get an expert’s eye
Staging a home for sale is a lot of work, but, you don’t have to figure it all out yourself. Talk to one of our home staging experts at MattBlak to get tailored advice from the Shire’s most trusted realtors. Visit our offices in Cronulla or Jannali, or contact us online