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| Home Staging for Free Tip 1 De-clutter Having every surface covered with your everyday ‘necessary’ items makes the place look untidy and worse…looks smaller.! Start in a neutral room like the bathroom or kitchen…or the downstairs loo. While the kettle boils for that cup of tea…work on just 1 drawer. Over the course of the evening you could have tidied out quite a lot of rubbish. The aim is to create ‘space in your place’ so don’t just shift it to another spot. If you don’t use it, loose it! Home Staging For Free Tip 2 Clean No one likes the idea of living with other people’s dirt…so get cleaning. If your home smells and looks clean you are creating a great environment for those viewers. You want your viewers to be thinking about buying your home…not about cleaning it! Cleaning your home goes hand in hand with de-cluttering, so get the bin, bags, dusters, sponges and rubber gloves out and get cleaning. Like De-Cluttering, tackle a room at a time. Get everyone to give a hand. The kids can do their bedrooms. Don’t forget to clean windows, they will let in a lot more light, and make the place feel brighter and bigger. Polish door fittings, taps, sinks and anything that will add a gleam to your home. By both de-cluttering and cleaning your home you will have done two of the most effective things you can in preparing your home to sell. Don’t underestimate their importance. and as Howard tells me "its a lot easier to get great photographs " Home Staging For Free Tip 3 Kerb appeal First impressions count… Think of all those viewers who may have passed your neighbours before reaching your front door. How does yours compare? Take a wander down the street and be honest. How good does your home look compared to the others in the street? Is the exterior of your home welcoming, well looked after, appealing or is it a disappointment! Your neighbours may be selling too, so you don’t want your home to be seen as a disappointment to the viewer because it doesn’t compare well with the neighbours. Home Staging For Free Tip 4 D.I.Y Sellers assume buyers don't notice those D.I.Y jobs you have been putting off , but viewers come with ‘Magnifying Glasses’ and not ‘Rose Tinted spectacles. They see the cracked tiles in the kitchen, they see the loose coving around the ceiling, and they see that odd patch of damp. And every time they see an unfinished job or a problem that needs sorting they mentally reduce the value of the property in their opinion. Viewers also always overestimate the cost of putting a problem right. Don’t give them an excuse to reduce the price of your property or worse dismiss it as ‘too much work to put right’. Do That D.I.Y…NOW. Home Staging For Free Tip 5 Depersonalise This really goes hand in hand with de-cluttering and cleaning, however I like to wait until the place is a little tidier before I get to grips with an over-personalised home. I often get asked ‘surely if I take all of my ‘things’ out of the property it will look bare?’ When Home Stagers talk about depersonalising the home they don’t mean striping it of all its personality…......just yours! Well to clarify, not really taking all of you out of it, just the more ‘in your face’ personality. Also remember why they are looking around. They are not there to admire your wonderful collection of Dickensian plates on your walls, but your walls. Don’t distract the viewer with all of your bits and pieces. So take down the flower arranging certificates, replace that funny poem in the bathroom, and thin out the photos in the living room. All these would only distract the viewer, and tell them things about you and not the house. Keep bathroom personal care products out of view. Home Staging For Free Tip 6 Keep It Tidy Selling is hard work because you have to be ready for ‘that’ viewing at any moment. This means that you really have to get into the habit of tidying away as you go along. Washing should be in the laundry bin, in the machine or away in the cupboard. Don’t let your viewers have to negotiate a clothes airer in the bathroom or bedroom, it won’t leave a good impression. Likewise don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink or a pile of clean dishes on the draining board… clear it away. Get everyone into the habit of putting away stuff after they have used it…this may be a bit of a battle with the kids or the other half, but don’t give in. Make your life easier by getting a few toy boxes for chucking in all the loose toys and invest in a remote control tidy for the end of the sofa. The hallway is often a wonderful dumping ground, try and find space to put away all those things that have been abandoned over the last few months. Home Staging For Free Tip 7 Make Each Room Count We buy by the number of rooms. What you want the viewers to do once they leave your home and go away to think about it and talk about it with their partner is to remember each and every room. Often I see properties with rooms that are general dumping grounds, or confused because there is no obvious use for them, like a dining room piled high with office equipment and filing cabinets, or the second bedroom empty but for a set of drums and a wardrobe. This is a real mistake because if a viewer can’t see what the room is for they may well dismiss it as unusable or worse forget it. Make each room count. Give each room a purpose or use so that your viewers can see how they could use it. Property is expensive, make sure that yours offers the viewers good value for money. Home Staging For Free Tip 8 Grow the Space Seriously, buyers are buying space. Space is a premium so you want to make the most of yours. When selling your home think of ways of making the rooms look bigger. Lighting and colour can help increase the feeling of space. However you can do a number of things just by moving furniture around. Firstly in your main rooms try and thin out the furniture. If you have a number of side-tables and footstools could you move one or two out of the room. Tip - the more floor that can be seen the larger a room will feel. So get everything you can off the floor and into cupboards or into the garage, loft or shed. Try and keep the lines of the room clean. Clear away stuff stored on top of kitchen and bedroom cupboards, these make a room feel over stuffed and suggest a lack of storage space. I like to suggest that if you are selling, consider renting a storage unit for a couple of months. Pack up all those things you wont need for the next few months or are not going to move with you Home Staging For Free Tip 9 Light = Space Think about trying to get as much light into your home as possible. Pull back the curtains and give the nets a wash…or better still get rid of them, if you can bare it. I also like to change light bulbs in all the appliances. Increase the wattage in those lights that illuminate internal spaces like hallways and bathrooms. (Don’t overload the appliances though). Even on bright days I like to have a little artificial lighting on to add some depth to the rooms. Home Staging For Free Tip 10 Will That Smell Help You Sell? Stale cigarette smoke, Last nights take away, The cat litter tray,That damp musty smell in the back bedroom, The cooker hood filter, The drain outside the back door Get things smelling fresh…open the doors and windows and let the air circulate. Now although I have set you quite a list of jobs to get started on the road to preparing your home for the viewing market, none of these cost a fortune to do, and most cost nothing at all. Once you have started on the process of getting your home ready you will feel a lot more positive. Remember that you are not only preparing your home you are also getting yourself ready for the move as well. for professional advice on the above please call us |
| Home Staging For Free (well nearly) Top Tips To Get Your Home Sold Well apart from baking bread and putting the coffee on there are a few other things you can do to get you on the right path to promoting your property properly so lets get right down to business. This Home Staging Advice will get you on the right path to getting your house sold. It’s not Rocket Science and it doesn't have to cost you money. Lets look at some easy to do tasks that will really make a difference to the feel of your home and how those all important viewers will see the space. |
