Are you considering putting your house up for sale, but not sure where to start? Afraid it will take too long to sell, or that you won't get the price you want? Think about staging your home, or in other words, setting the scene for immediate buyer interest in your property.
Pack up everything you don't need and store the boxes out of sight in the garage (or consider temporarily renting a small storage locker).
To be really effective, you need to look at both the outside and the inside of your home. Here are 3 tips to get you started with the inside of your home:
1. De-clutter. This is one of the most important things you can do. Anything that personalizes your home needs to be removed, or changed. For instance, if you have pictures of your family you should take them down. It's harder for someone to imagine themselves living there if they're looking at pictures of your and your family. Anything religious should be removed as well because not everyone is religious or is the same religion as you. It's pretty easy to depersonalize your house, and it's going to cost you nothing to do it. The results will be beneficial to getting your home sold faster and maintaining it's value.
2. Organize your closets - put similar colors together, pants together, skirts together, shirts together etc. Why? Because it will make the closets look bigger. (Really.) An organized closet appears bigger, and you want your closets to look as spacious as possible.
3. Make your home look like a model. You want to de-personalize as much as possible so potential buyers can imagine themselves and their own belongings occupying the space in your house. That means minimizing and putting away everything you don't need or use. Clear off kitchen counters as much as possible ñ stash all those appliances you don't use, and put miscellaneous small clutter in a few attractive baskets or boxes
And the biggest tip of all? Imagine yourself as a potential buyer looking at your property for the very first time. What impressions are you getting? Would YOU buy your house? What would you like to see changed before you put an offer on your house?
And don't worry about spending several thousand dollars to get your house ready to sell; you'll get it all back when your house sells. Proper staging helps you sell your house in a shorter time and at the price you want.