First Person: How Not to Stage Your Home for Sale

Staging a home for sale is "Realtor-speak" for making your house look super attractive to potential buyers. Cleaning your home, decluttering, scrubbing the garage floor, setting out freshly baked cookies, and planting pansies in the flower beds are all examples of staging.

Back when I used to sell real estate, I showed thousands of homes in all ranges of prices. Most of these homes were artfully staged to make a great first impression. A few owners, however couldn't be bothered to stage their homes. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but these owners somehow managed to make their homes so unattractive that my buyers couldn't get out the door and away from the house fast enough.

When it comes to preparing your home for an open house or a showing, your Realtor can provide you with staging tips that work. I on the other hand, can offer up some real life examples of staging no-nos that are guaranteed to chase off potential buyers.

DO touch up or repaint the interior where needed using neutral colors.
DON'T use the paint to decorate the walls with inverted pentagrams, all seeing eyes, and assorted other Satanic symbols.

DO declutter your home to create a feeling of spaciousness.
DON'T invite the gang for a night of drinking followed by a sleep over. Forty drunk men sleeping off a bender on the living floor makes a house seem small, stuffy, and inadequate.

DO clean and deodorize a house so it smells fresh and inviting.
DON'T fix stinky dinners. Cooking stinky, greasy, gas-producing spicy food the night before a showing means that potential buyers won't make it any further than the living room before deciding they've seen and smelled enough.

DO hose off the stoop, mow the lawn, and plant bedding flowers in the planters.
DON'T forget to take down the dead deer that's been aging in the shed since last month.

DO clean the bathrooms until they shine.
DON'T forget to scrub the sink, bleach the toilets, and hide your collection of porn.

DO straighten out and declutter the closets.
DON'T use the closets to stash stolen merchandise or illegal substances.

DO keep the kitchen tidy, picked up, and counters cleared. A bouquet of fresh flowers on the table and a plate of cookies will add a nice touch.
DON'T leave the dishes for the housekeeper. Three weeks of dirty dishes and pots piled on the tables, counters, and in the sink will make a tiny kitchen seem positively claustrophobic.
DOUBLE DOG DON'T leave your 20 cats in the house to finish up what's left of the table scraps.

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