Tips on Staging Your Home

Anyone who is in the process of selling their home wants to know the “tricks” on how to stage a home prior to selling. Home staging is crucial to the sale. Odors, appearance of pets and clutter can ruin a sale faster than you can say “gone”. Some people choose the route of having a professional home stager come in, but not everyone has the $150 an hour to invest in this type of consulting, and for most homes, it is unnecessary.

In general, when planning home staging, think: clean, impersonal, uncluttered, and open. Buyers do not want distractions that remind them that this is someone else’s house. They want to envision their furniture and their things in the home.

Here are some tips on staging your home before you sell:

• Mulch, weed, cut your lawn, blow leaves out of the yard, and perform other “curb appeal” activities that will give the potential buyers the best possible first impression of your home.
• Remove all items of personal nature. No pictures, no drawings, no embroidery—nothing that reminds people that a particular family lives there.
• Move your pets out if possible, or if not possible put them in one area of the home and keep that area immaculate. Pet odor is one of the leading causes of people leaving a house walk through early.
• Remove clutter, junk, and distractions. Keep in mind the “blank slate” rule. People want to see open spaces because it gives the brain an open invitation to imagine their own items in that room. Empty houses sell better than houses with people in them for this reason. Take 80-90% of the items out of every room, and put them in the garage or storage facility.
• Paint rooms neutral colors. Painting shouldn't be that expensive, and is one of the single most used “tricks” by home stagers to sell a house quickly. The smell of fresh paint and the clean appearance is attractive to home buyers.
• Clean your home from top to bottom and if you have the extra money have the home professionally cleaned, from carpet to cabinets. 
• Whenever possible, have cookies baking or other nice food-based smells. People go back and forth on what “floral” scents they like, but most humans respond to the smells of baked goods.

There is no secret trick to how to stage your home when you are selling your house,just common sense approaches to creating an inviting experience for the potential home buyer. Remember: Clean, uncluttered, impersonal, and open.