• Free download: 10 Tips on staging a home for quick sale in Colorado Springs
Top 10 Home Staging Tips
Today we are going to learn about some home staging tips! We have 10 tips for you today that are going to help you make the most amount of money in the least amount of time so stick with us! Also, please keep in mind that this blog is the video transcribed. Let's go!
It is a seller's market and we are hearing people are getting offered full cash with a quick close. You can close your house in a couple weeks or so. A lot of people are also offering way over the list price on average anywhere between four and six percent - for sale price versus what it closed at and we have seen go as high as 21 percent or more depending on the type of home, the price of home, and the location of the home. The difference between getting a sixty thousand dollar over list price versus your home just sitting on the market for a little bit longer is if you just take a little bit more care and take a few more steps to get your house multiple offers, make your house the house that the buyer has to buy and they're willing to pay above and beyond to get the house of their dreams.
Make Sure to Declutter Your Home
The first thing that you're going to want to do is make sure that you declutter your home. You want to make it look like nobody lives there. Have you ever walked into a model home and noticed how there's no personal picture’s, there's no personal items? And yeah, it's a new build but, they are intentionally staging the home this way so that they can let the buyer walk through feeling like they can imagine themselves being in that house. So, good marketing on a house listed is going to be de-personalizing the house. Decluttering. If you've got pictures on the walls, you want to take those down. If you've got anything like my house, you've got magnets on the fridge, you've got little sticky notes, your kids’ or dog pictures might be on the walls, your kid’s little drawings that they made you from school. All that needs to go in a box because you're going to be moving anyway, right? So, you might as well just take all that stuff down. All the stuff that you've got just make it look like nobody lives there, so that the buyer can walk through and imagine themselves sitting at the kitchen table. You know, reading a book by the fireplace.
Clean Everything to the Best of Your Ability
The second thing (this is pretty easy to do) is just to get down and clean everything to the best of your ability. We can't tell you how many times we’ve gone into houses and they were dirty. Like the cabinets were dirty. They've got fingerprints and hand prints all over. And yes, we're in a seller's market but, you want people to come in and have a positive experience while they're touring your house. If they see jelly smeared all over your kitchen or doorknobs or anything like that, that's going to be a little bit of a turn off. That's not going to attract the most amount of money in the quickest amount of time. That's the goal here. The most amount of money in the quickest amount of time and the best offers. Of course, you want to try and attract the best offer so that you can negotiate. Maybe you’re moving to another state. You can do your post occupancy; you can stay later if you need to. You kind of have that leverage where someone is willing to wait one or two months. Then you’ll have more leverage to be able to negotiate those kinds of things. When you're going to close. How much money you're going to get over the listing price, appraisal gaps, and how much people are willing to offer when they see a nice clean house. Make sure that you sweep the floor or clean anything that's going to distract the buyer from wanting to buy the house. If they see that the house is messy then they're going to think that you didn't take care of the house over the years. So, that desire is just not going to be as strong and as impulsive to want to write the highest and best offer for your property.
Make Sure Your House Smells Nice and Clean
The third thing that we suggest that people do is to do the smell test. The smell test is like, take a walk around your house. Go outside. Smell the grass. Smell the trees. Take in all the air. Take a deep breath. Maybe sniff some coffee or something while you're outside. Just take a little coffee in a cup and just sniff it while you're outside. Then, come back inside the house and take a big whiff of your home now. You can even have a family member or a friend come over and check this out for you. But, do the smell test and let them be honest with you and tell you if your house smells like cat urine, or if it smells like smoke, or it smells like, I don't know what. You want to make sure that your house smells nice and clean but not overpowering. Don't go out and get candles. That could also be distracting to a buyer. Make sure that you take the trash out. If you're living in the house and you made say, something in the crock pot the night before, make sure you take the trash out. Just make sure that your house smells great when people come in. A light scent is good enough. Don't do anything overpowering because people are sensitive to smells and can get distracted by smells. They don't want to feel like they're going to have to move in and be stuck with a certain odor. Again, use a friend or family member to help you through that process.
Brighten Up the Place
The fourth thing you want to do is brighten up the space if you've got blinds make sure that you open all the blinds let in as much light as possible you might want to switch out your old yellow bulbs to get something with more of a natural light you can just go to home depot or Lowe’s to get more of a natural bright light into your house so get rid of those dark lights if you can i know sometimes it's a little bit harder when you're downstairs in the basement but if you can remove and replace some lighting then that might help with the brightness a lot of people are attracted to bright spaces the next thing that you want to do to make sure that your home is staged perfectly to get more money in the quickest amount of time is to make sure that you're promoting the flow of the space make sure that every piece of furniture is complementing the space that it's in so if you have a kitchen area make sure that you have a kitchen space a kitchen table that makes sense that looks good in that space you don't want to put like i know some people have like two dining tables in one space or they have this oversized table that makes the space look small you want to make sure that the flow of the house is going to be pleasing and appealing to the buyers when they walk through your home I know sometimes people will put like a pantry um in the basement or they'll add like a refrigerator in the basement you definitely don't want to do that if you can move that refrigerator to the garage and let the space breathe make sure that the space is being conveyed the way that it's supposed to be.
Liven the Place
The next thing is to liven the space. It would be a great idea to bring in some plants. We would prefer real plants because you want to bring life into the home. Bringing the outdoors inside is definitely something that is trending. Some farmhouse type of decorations or some live plants. Maybe even a fake plant. As long as it looks real you can get away with having that staged nicely in your home. Just on the table or maybe in a corner somewhere. It doesn't have to be crazy. Just get a few plants to bring the space alive. Just bringing in a bowl of colorful fruits like oranges, apples, and grapes. You just want to set that on the table or on the counter. We've seen people have place settings and they'll put a little bouquet of flowers. It just livens up the space and makes it feel fresh and alive. The next home staging tip that I’d like to share with you is just setting your kitchen table. Or, if you have a counter or a bar stool area like above the sink. Making place settings will make people feel like they're at home, right? They come in and they see that the table is set. It kind of looks like they're coming home for dinner or, they can imagine themselves having dinner in the house. It just gives that little extra touch that makes your space feel welcome, inviting, and homely in a good way. It makes the space feel like home for the potential buyer.
Ditch Your Old Blankets
The next thing that you want to do is ditch your old blankets. Unless you have really nice linen blankets or linen for your bed. Go out and spend 10 or 15 dollars, even at the Family Dollar. Just get something very simple, clean, crisp. Throw it over the bed. Throw a couple nice pillows. You don't have to spend a ton of money but, just make it look nice and presentable. I like to think of it like a hotel. When you walk into a hotel it looks very clean and bright. It just makes you want to get in bed. There are some nice fluffy pillows on the bed and it just very inviting. You want to provide that same experience and that same feeling when you're selling a house. Make sure that you're using nice towels. If you're going to be decorating the bathrooms and you have old crusty towels take those towels, put them in a box, and get a brand-new set. You can find stuff super cheap at Ross or something. Get a nice set for the bathroom just for your staging purposes. I’m telling you; it'll go a long way. Don't put dingy towels in the bathroom.
Same for the kitchen. If you’ve got old grungy kitchen towels, you want to make it look brand new and fresh. Or just remove them completely. If you've got dirty sponges out, dirty rags, dishes, that’s part of the whole personalization thing. Put all the dishes away, your dish racks, anything that you have out on the counter. Just put them away for showings. You're not going to have to show for that long just a few days. Make it look more put together and depersonalized. The Softsoap you might want to put away, unless you have something nice. Like a nice little generic soap container that doesn't have any branding on it.
Minor Home Repairs?
The last thing is going to be your repairs. I know for a lot of people; you've been living in your house for years and it's been your own. So, you might have put off a lot of minor repairs. Like if you have a broken doorknob, maybe someone accidentally broke it, or maybe one of your baseboards is hanging off a little bit. Maybe one of your blinds is cracked, maybe someone threw a football into it. Doing these minor touches, unless it's not in your budget to fix up, I would definitely make those minor repairs. Especially when it comes to kitchen sinks and bathroom sinks. You can get a new faucet pretty inexpensively these days. Just run down to Home Depot and find something on clearance. It doesn't have to match. I mean, I would match if it’s chrome or brass or something like that. Make sure it matches up color scheme wise but, as far as having like the exact same sink in each bathroom. If you have a broken faucet handle, make sure that you fix that. If the plastic is chipped off anywhere, tears in the carpet. Those are just tiny little things that are going make the value of your home appear higher. I don't know what your budget is but, you know what you can do if you just walk around the house with a checklist. If there's some touch-up paint that needs to happen. If there's a hole in the wall that you can just quickly patch up. They have stuff even at the Dollar Store where you could just tidy it up and paint over it. Get yourself a little repair kit and just make it look nice. Repair those minor things and that will go a long way. Make sure that your front yard looks good, your backyard looks clean. Make sure there's not any dead plants out there that need to be removed. These are all simple things that are part of the cleaning process that we had talked about earlier. Just improve your curb appeal. You don't have to go out and get it re-landscaped. You don't have to spend a ton. Just make it look nice. Clean it up. Get rid of dead branches, clean up the rocks a little. Just walk around your house with a little checklist.
Conclusion
So we know a lot of this can be very overwhelming and we would love to help you sell your house in Colorado springs, so if you want us to help you list your home just let me know! You can email me, call me, text me, and I would love to give you some tips, or even if you just have some general questions about selling your house; there's a lot that goes into it. Depending on the area that you're in, the neighborhood that you're in...there are different issues that could rise up in different parts of town so not every part of Colorado Springs is going to be treated the same when it comes to selling your house, so feel free to reach out. Also, don't forget your free home staging checklist.
Talk soon!
IRIS BURTON, REALTOR®
BROKER ASSOCIATE
#100089541
PROSPERITY GROUP
Brokered by EXP® REALTY, LLC
Colorado Springs, CO
719.315.5016