Common Staging Mistake that Home Sellers Make
A simple search online will quickly show you the importance of staging your home when you are trying to sell it. There are new statistics every year to prove that staging your home will help it sell on average faster and for more money than homes that have not been staged. Many home sellers are not willing to spend the money to hire a professional stager to assist them in their house, and they become DIY stagers.
The amount of information you can find online on how to stage seems endless, however, not all advice is good advice. When staging a home as home sellers less really can be more; but it is easy to get carried away and go overboard.
Remember to avoid these 5 common mistakes as home sellers when staging your house to sell:
- Overdoing it
The whole purpose of staging is to design and structure your house in a way that will allow potential buyers to picture themselves living in your house. It can be helpful to bring in items to make buyers feel comfortable and welcome, but you have to be careful not to clutter the rooms.
You want to create an atmosphere that buyers can picture themselves in, but you want to keep it simple enough that they can also picture their belongings in your house. This is hard to accomplish if you fill the rooms with too much.
- Not thinking outside of the box
Many home sellers get stuck in the habit of arranging all of their furniture so the backs are up against a wall. While there are times that this is the best option, it isn’t always true when staging. You want to arrange your furniture to place the focus on the focal point of each room. Create spaces that invite people to sit and visit. Instead of aiming all of the furniture at the TV, arrange pieces of furniture facing each other near the fireplace.
- Not creating the atmosphere
Staging goes beyond simply arranging furniture in a room. You also want to strategically place neutral items on or around the furniture to play on the emotion of the buyers. Place a few carefully chosen books on the coffee table, drape a throw blanket over the arm of a chair, place a bowl of fruit on the kitchen counters or a pitcher of lemonade and some glasses on a patio table on the deck. Place items that show a lifestyle that potential buyers would enjoy.
- Focusing on every room
While you want to stage the kitchen, living room, master bedrooms and bathrooms, there are rooms that are better left to the imagination of the buyer. If you have several extra bedrooms or a den/office you can leave the room open for the potential buyer to decide how they would want to use the room. However, it can be helpful to choose what areas to focus on based on the demographics of your area.
If most of the people living in your neighborhood are young couples/families and you are in a great school district it might not hurt to create a nursery or child’s room so buyers can picture themselves starting or raising their family in the house.
Staging your home should not be neglected when you are preparing to sell. The bottom line is to remember to create the look of a lifestyle in your home that buyers want to have, without adding too many personal details so they can’t imagine living in the house. Give their minds enough to start thinking about the dream and allow them to fill in the details.