Selling your home and getting the best possible price is about more than just hanging a “for sale” sign in the yard and posting images on Zillow.
You’ll get better results if you position your home as being the most desirable home in the neighborhood.
And one of the most effective ways to do that is to “stage” your home.
But as anyone who’s ever tried to do that can tell you, it isn’t as easy as it seems.
Sometimes you need a bit of clarity to help you zero in on the changes that will be most effective.
So here are 3 clever home staging tactics that can help your home to stand out and help you get the best price possible when selling your home.
1. Think Model Home
As any realtor or home stager will tell you, the more you can help prospective buyers visualize themselves living in your home, the more likely they’ll make an offer…an offer that could be more than if you didn’t stage your home.
If you’ve ever visited a model home you’ll have a good idea of a target to shoot for in your home staging efforts.
A model home is clean, well lit and neutral in colors, with a few bright splashes of color to set off the rest of the decor.
2. Create a vignette in each room
A vignette is a small scene that sets a focus for a room and gives it a certain mood.
This is a fast, easy and inexpensive way to draw attention to focal points of a room.
Here are some key tips the pros use when creating vignettes:
- ⬥ Put the scenes around a light source (e.g. a votive candle surrounded by stone or pebbles on a silver tray)
- ⬥ Combine a variety of textures to add visual interest
- ⬥ Include a bit of vibrant color in each scene
- ⬥ Begin with a theme (e.g. old map, binoculars and safari hat propped dramatically on the entryway hall table)
- ⬥ The idea behind creating a vignette is to set up a scene in which buyers would love to place themselves in.
- ⬥ Place odd numbers of the items in your vignette – this adds an authentic touch
- ⬥ Don’t use anything with religious or political implications
- ⬥ Don’t combine themes…keep them cohesive
Note: Pinterest has hundreds of vignette ideas to spark your creativity when creating vignettes for your home.
3. Hide personal items
To maintain the mood that you’re trying to create hide all evidence that you live in the home – including any cleaning products and tools such as a vacuum, broom, and mop. The last thing you want to do is remind your buyers of the necessity of everyday cleaning.
Strange, yes, but the point is to keep them enchanted with the home so they’ll take home the good feeling it left them with…hopefully then leading to an offer.
Hiding not only your personal items but the reminders of day to day priorities will encourage potential buyers to stay longer, and when they stay longer, the more they’ll fall in love with your home.
A staging survey done by the National Association of Realtors reports that the most commonly staged rooms are:
- ⬥ Living room
- ⬥ Kitchen
- ⬥ Master bedroom
⬥ Dining room
For the best results, do these rooms first and only move on to other rooms of your home once you’ve tackled these four in this order.
