If you are hoping to sell the home quickly and for as much money as possible, you are going to need to spend a little time highlight your home’s strengths, downplaying its weaknesses in order to appeal to the largest amount of buyers. Here are five more ways to help you better stage your home.
1. An Inviting Bedroom
Bedrooms may not be the first room buyers check out when they tour a home, but how much they like the bedrooms, especially the master, has a major influence on how much they like the house. Let’s start with the bed. Whatever the style of the bed, dress it up to look inviting with luxurious linens and soft colors that will make a potential home buyer want to make it theirs. A small bedroom can be staged without a dresser to give it a larger feel, but you’ll still need a nightstand as a replacement furniture piece. The last piece of advice is to add a bit of green to your bedroom, whether it is with some flowers or a plant.
2. Kitchen Makeover
If your kitchen is outdated but you don’t want to update it, just change the look. Start with the cabinets. If your cabinets are in good condition but outdated, paint them. For wood cabinets, you may want to consider staining them a darker color. For the cabinets doors, replace them with pre-made ones. This will definitely update the look of the kitchen. While replacing the doors, purchase some new hardware. Brushed nickel is a very modern style that can help update your kitchen.
3. Finished That Job!
If you are anything like me, you probably have quite a few home repair projects that you have started but have not seemed to finish just yet. If you want to sell you home, you are going to need to either finish those projects or hire someone to do it for you. Whether it is adding more insulation to the attic, repairing the crack in the driveway, re-chalking the bathtub, adding some touch-up paint to the walls, get this done before you start showing you home. All the little things will be noticed by someone looking to possibly live there and you don’t’ want to be in competition with another home where all that kind of work was done when yours wasn’t.
4. A New (Painted) Bath
If your bathroom is outdated but you don’t want to completely rehab it, consider taking a weekend to renovate it. A new coat of paint will immediately update the bathroom. You may also consider having the tiles professionally painted. Little things such as a new towel, bar, toilet paper holder, a shelf will add new like to the bath. You should also make sure the bath is appropriately lighted,. A halogen light fixture will not only change the look of the room but will also make the other features look better.
5. Clear the Basement
I have lost count of how many homes I have been to during showings where the everything in the house was impeccably neat and tidy, except for the basement, which looked like a tornado ran through it. In my original post on Staging Your Home, I mentioned removing your clutter. That did not mean re-moving everything to the basement. Prospective home buyers will look in your basement and they will see your clutter. If your basement has a lot of things but they are stored properly on shelves, this will look tidy and make a good impression. If, however, your basement has no order to the madness, this will be the image that sticks out in your prospective homebuyers’ minds. Do you really want this to be the image that sticks out in their minds when they think about your home after they leave?
Dan Brassil
Real Estate Professional
St. Louis Real Estate
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