Home Staging - Showing You How To Set The Stage For A Quicker Sale

Statistics have shown that critical first impressions are formed within ten seconds of entering a home. Will they buy, or walk away? And, unlike in the movies, there are no chances for a second take to get it right!

When deciding to sell a home there will be many things on your 'To-Do' list. Your realtor will take you through the listing process, and more than likely discuss ways in which you can prepare your home to show to it's best advantage.

There are plenty of tips on getting your home ready to put on the market. Here are a few of the most important ones I recommend to my clients:

* Look at your home, inside and out, with critical "Buyers Eyes". First focus on curb appeal. Then move inside, going room by room, taking note of each of your 'first' impressions.

* De-clutter . . . and then de-clutter some more. Buyers won't purchase a home they can't see. And remember, people are buying square footage.

* Make sure everything works - faulty light switches, leaky faucets, rusty drains, etc. These repairs may seem minor, but left undone they can lead buyers to question what else might need fixing. Get rid of their mental repair list by doing it yourself.

* Lighten . . . brighten . . . freshen up! Address the senses. Focus on sufficiently balanced lighting and pleasing color selections that complement rather than take center stage. Freshen up, making sure that there are no offensive smells, (especially pet odors), that will linger in a buyers mind long after they have walked away. Remember, buyers will buy what they see . . . and smell!

* If you aren't able to view your home objectively then you won't be able to market it effectively. You will need to go back to my first tip of looking at your home with "Buyers Eyes."

Home staging has become a popular means of preparing homes to show to their best advantage. Staging includes all of the basic tips above, and so many more. A professional stager will look at your home from a fresh and unemotional perspective. They have been trained to view your home as a product, highlighting assets and downplaying flaws. By using a combination of your furniture and accesories, adding new accents to update the look, and strategically incorporating a few "designer tricks-of-the-trade", a stager is able to create the model home WOW effect . . . while appealing to your target market.

Home staging focuses on fast, dramatic and affordable transformations to insure that your home will be the one remembered from the real estate tour. Once staged, the house will be "showcase ready", which will also make it "photo ready"! Since 85% of home buyers are using the internet to determine which homes to even visit, photos of professionally staged rooms will set the listing apart from the rest.

Finally, home staging has been proven to be an affordable investment which reaps a large return on dollars spent . . . an investment few sellers can afford not to make in todays highly competitive real estate market. And remember, staging almost always costs less than your first price reduction!