First Home Facts

Staging too Expensive? Prepare Your Home For Buyers With These Low-Cost Tips

Staging is a great way to make a home seem more appealing a find a buyer quickly. In wealthier areas, it's almost considered a necessity if you want to sell a home. However, hiring a staging team can be pretty costly. If you're on a tight budget and want to sell your home quickly, there are a few things you can do -- short of hiring a professional stager -- to "stage" your home and prepare it for visiting buyers.

Remove all personalized items.

When a potential buyer tours your home, you want them to picture themselves inside the home with their family. If you have personal photos on the walls, this will be harder for them. So take down all of your personal items and put them in a box. Store this box at a friend or relative's house (or in a storage unit) until the sale is complete.

Don't over-stuff the closets.

Potential buyers are going to want to see the inside of the closets. This will be hard for them to do if your closets are completely packed. Take some time to organize your closets, and if needed, pull some items out to ensure there's a clear view of the actual closet. You can put the extra items in storage, if needed.

Bake some cookies.

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to bake cookies before potential buyers come view the home. This gives the house an appealing, lived-in scent. If you don't want to deal with the mess of baking cookies, spray some vanilla air freshener and place a package of cookies on the counter. This way, visitors will have something tasty to enjoy as they browse the home and the space will also smell nice.

Remove some furniture.

You want the house to feel spacious and more open so buyers feel like they're getting a lot of space for their money. A quick way to make the home feel more spacious is to remove some of the furniture and put it in storage. Leave only the best pieces and the essentials. Remove smaller, less important items like ottomans and end tables.

Open the blinds.

Open the blinds or window treatments, and let the natural light shine in. It will make the whole space feel more open, make the colors seem brighter, and add a sense of happiness to the room. Just make sure the windows are impeccably clean first.

For more insight on home staging, contact companies like The Soda Group.


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