Sell Your House Faster, Use Home Staging

A friend of mine put her lovely three bedroom house, in a good neighborhood on the market at a very reasonable price almost six months ago. After a lot of interest but no offers we decided to do a little research into home staging and apply what we learned. A mere month after the changes were made so was an offer and her house sold! We decided to lend a hand to some other for sale by owner type people and have had great success. Here are a few living room home staging tips that worked out super for us.

The very first thing I would suggest when you begin your home staging is get a storage unit! Even if you don't have much stuff it still needs to be put out of sight, so even a little storage unit will come in handy. You can find specials and the best rates by calling around.

To make your house ready to sell remove all personal items from the room. No blankets thrown over the backs of couches, all loose papers and magazines gathered up and taken out and no sign of pets. Some people are allergic, some scared of them and some just don't like them. You don't want your buyer anxious from the start. You're aiming for a welcoming, comfortable feel from the start with your staged room.

Now don't be shy! Fill that storage unit up! To you those cute pigs on the table and the statues from your trip to Jamaica are cherished knick knacks, to a perspective buyer it's clutter! To get a quick sale you want the buyer to look at your lovely home, not be distracted by your many things. Clear off all surfaces, down to the minimum. A lamp and a small tasteful, neutral decoration on end tables for example, is fine. Less is more in this respect.

When home staging your living room make sure you don't have too much furniture for the room. You may need the extra seating for friends and relatives but too much furniture in a room makes the room look small and crowded. Pick your best pieces and set up a seating arrangement for about four people in an average size living room. For instance, in say, a 16 by 20 room, keep one couch, two nice chairs that either match or compliment each other, a coffee table and two attractive end tables or large accents, like over sized flower pots. You should be able to walk freely around the furniture and see an obvious flow around the room.

If your interior paint is drastically diverse it makes your home seem smaller, like it's broken up into lots of different little pieces instead of different sections of a larger whole. To sell your house quickly pick the room that you think is the biggest attraction in your home then paint with colors that compliment the color scheme of that room throughout the house. To appeal to and attract the most buyers use a soft muted pallet of modern colors. Soft sage green, a flat soft charcoal or something in a sandstone hue are all popular now.

Another note about walls, some of us have a bazillion pictures of our lives and loves on our walls. Take them down and store them. While staging your home you're going for more of a resort condo furnishing rather than the Walton's living room. Stick with a few nice things that will accent the room, not cover it in things that will distract your buyer from the room itself.

When you have your room painted and emptied of all unnecessary furniture, knick knacks, personal items, loose papers and magazines you're well on your way to a nicely staged room. You can go back thru your staged room and add a few decorative items, maybe in a contrasting color scheme. Remember the idea is to never hear your buyer say, mmm, this is just not me. It may seem empty to you, but remember, you're trying to sell your house! Staging your home may be the difference between selling your house and not. The idea behind home staging is to make the buyer want to see more, to feel like the house they've just walked into is a place they could picture themselves in, making a home.