When you’re looking to sell your home, you want to present it at its best for the potential buyers. Home staging is a key aspect, especially if you want to sell your property at the best possible price and within the shortest period of time. In this aticle we will give you some valuable tips for staging your home to sell, tips that will attract and influence potential buyers.
Home staging comes down to decorating your property as unpersonal as possible, highlighting your home’s best features which will help buyers imagine themselves living there, it comes down to smart decision making and investment of time. If staging is done right the property sells faster, it’s a fact. Therefore, it’s only a gain situation for owners to put some time and effort into looking closely at their home and staging accordingly, and when better than now that everybody has extra time, as we have all been asked to STAY HOME.
Staging doesn’t have to mean spending money, it’s the time most owners wouldn’t usually have that is the main investment. Take the opportunity now to give your property a fresh look so potential buyers can imagine themselves living there, as well as revamp a property that has gone stagnant. And if anyone is thinking “what for? We are not going to get visits in ages” well, these are unprecedented times, however times where everyone is at home and potential buyers have time to look on websites and consider possible investments, they didn’t have time to before.
At Solobanus we are getting enquiries for both sales and long-term rentals from clients, times are changing, and we will all have to change with these times sooner or later so why not use this time and be prepared- it is a new beginning for the Property Market as we know it. Once your home is all ready to present you can video it with your mobile and send it to us at [email protected] we are offering virtual tours to potential buyers and tenants.
1. Where to start Staging
Not all the rooms of the house influence equally a buyer’s decision to buy. Let’s start with those which will have the biggest impact on a buyers decisions, like the living room, then the master bedroom and the kitchen these are considered the most important influencing rooms, other rooms like guest rooms, children rooms and other bathrooms have less influence, however if you still have time you can get to these later.
2. Get rid of Personal touches and things that show the property already has an owner.
Buyers need to be able to see themselves living in the house, therefore personals are a definite NO, get rid of any personal things at sight, like family pictures, magnets on fridge, religious ornaments, knitted bed covers, put clothes away in cupboards and unclutter your bathroom tops, find a way of keeping your toiletries out of site in the bathroom cupboards or other. While it’s true that de-personalizing your home makes it a little strange to live in, it is vital if the buyer is to get a connexion with your property and start imagining himself living in it, it will all be worth it.
3. Clutter makes your home look smaller
Make your home look bigger and brighter by taking away the extras that are not a need, keep it to basic and only what you need for daily use. Extra things will only steal optical size from your property and you want to bring out the best in your property, extra space is considered luxury and helps property sell, so don’t cramp it when you can unclutter it and add square metres. Put your things in storage if need be, where they will not be seen, give away things you no longer have use for, it is a liberating feeling I promise you.
4. Clean like you’re getting rid of the Virus
You want every corner of your property to shine, even those hidden. Invision stage cleaning like the kind of intense cleaning you’d want to do if you were moving into a new house. Clean also inside of the fridge, closets and other places you may not do on a daily basis or as often, this kind of cleaning suggests the property is well maintained and will get rid of any lingering old smells from the core. Clean the windows too.
5. Small DIY we can all do
Home staging is a good time to take care of those small things around the house that have been neglected, scratches, dirt on walls and doors, holes that need covering, broken things that you can either fix or throw out, it’s time to do something about these. Repair, hide cables, fix chipped paint or even give the place a fresh coat of paint, be meticulous you want your property to look nice and well maintained and it makes a big difference when you look at the whole picture later.
6. Neutral is always best
This part of staging may need some time spent and some investment but you will see the difference when it comes to your sale price too and time your property takes to sell. Avoid having rooms painted in bold or different colours as this can be a major put-off for buyers, go for neutrals light, plain colours, like white or grey, these colours are easy to match with most furniture and allow buyers to see the options they have without distracting them from being able to picture a future in this property.
7. First impressions
The front entrance is the first thing a buyer is going to see when they walk into your house, so you want to make a positive, welcoming and strong first impression. Keep it simple with very few touches, a doormat and perhaps a plant. Smell is important- so a subtle incense stick that gives a good fresh smell and if it’s in a nice packaging it can serve as a decorative feature too. Simple but welcoming to start buyers off on the right foot.
8. Focus on fresh
Less is more, too many items in a home can devalue a property, a few well maintained, well-placed plants and flowers can add life and freshness into the space. But space them out so as not to clutter any one particular area, perhaps a vase full of bright flowers as a centre piece of your dining table, a nice plant in the living room corner, no need for too much. If you don’t have the time to maintain fresh plants,a fake plant will set the same atmosphere, but be selective and don’t overdo it, it’s about quality details not quantity, as quantity usually has the complete opposite effect.
9. Let there be light
Light is happiness, dark is sad. With this in mind, try to bring out all the light possible into your house. Open curtains and blinds, which will not only brighten the room up but will make it seem larger.
10. Reconsider and Re-arrange your furniture
You want there to be as much open, walkable space as possible. This will allow buyers to cruise the space comfortably and also help them visualize their own furniture in each room or how they might like to set each room for their own purposes. Put away any strange looking furniture in storage, get rid of oversized or broken furniture pieces and those that don’t match the room. Once you know what’s staying (make this decision smart one NOT an emotional-attached one), rearrange the furniture to make the rooms look and feel as ample, fresh, bright and aired as possible.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money to stage and prepare your home to sell, its all about taking the time and making clever decisions that will be rewarded at the end. Ask Solobanus for further tips on how to improve and add value to your home, all this will influence the buyers who come for viewings. Once you know you’ve done everything you can to show your home in the best light possible, take a video of your whole house with your phone and send it over to us at Solobanus [email protected] or fill in your details on our page https://solobanus.com/es/propietarios/, then you can sit back and wait for us to find the right buyer.
Design of article by Luna Salem (Aloha College, Nueva Andalucia, Marbella, Spain)