Staging and Selling Your Home

Staging and selling your home doesn’t have to be expensive or stressful. Even if you need to sell your home quickly, don’t skip staging and preparing it for sale before photos are taken for online listings. You can have it professionally staged if you don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself. Properly staging your home inside and out will make it more appealing and help it stand out against other listings in your area.

What Is Home Staging?

From a marketing perspective, home staging is preparing your home to showcase its best aspects so prospective buyers are immediately attracted to it and can envision themselves living in the home. By decluttering, cleaning and rearranging furniture and décor inside the home, and upgrading the curb appeal on the exterior, your home becomes more attractive to potential buyers.

Advantages of Staging Your Home Before Selling

An important advantage of staging your home before selling is that your online listing photos will look better and attract more interest and showings which could lead to more offers.

A report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) titled 2021 Profile of Home Staging, indicated 82 percent of buyer’s agents said staging a home made it easier for a buyer to visualize the property as a future home.

The same report noted that buyers were more willing to walk through a home they saw online (41 percent), and buyers’ agents identified that staging would positively impact the home value if the home was decorated to a buyer’s taste (39 percent).

Hire A Professional or Do It Yourself

When staging and selling your home, you’ll need to decide whether you will hire a professional staging company or do the staging and prep yourself.

If you have plenty of time and want to save money on staging and prepping your home for sale, that’s certainly an option. You may be able to work with a staging company to handle part of the project and do some of it yourself.

If you do it yourself, you will need to take care of adding/removing furniture and décor, interior and exterior repairs and painting as well as deep cleaning the entire house. You’ll also need to handle getting rid of any lingering odors, especially from pets. And don’t forget about lawn maintenance. You want potential buyers to see the positive aspects of the home, not a list of projects they will have to do if they buy your home. See the list of important home staging tips below to get a better idea of what’s involved.

The price of having a home professionally staged varies greatly depending on the local real estate market, the condition of the home and the available furnishings and décor they have to work with. It’s worth getting estimates as well as a detailed list of what is included in the quote from a professional home staging company.

Important Home Staging Tips

Declutter Your Home: Decluttering your home will make it look larger and more appealing. Box up everything you don’t need and put it in storage. Remove as many personal items as you can and clean off counters and furniture. Pay attention to cabinets and closets as well as the garage. You want to show potential buyers how much storage your home has, so clean them out, throw away anything you don’t need and pack up what you can do without for now.
Minor Repairs: Take care of minor repairs inside and outside your home before having it cleaned. Spackling, caulk and paint touch-ups make a huge difference in how well maintained your house looks inside and out. If larger repairs are required, they can be included in post-inspection negotiations unless you want to take care of them before listing your home for sale.
Deep Clean Entire Home: If cleaning every nook and cranny in your home is too daunting a task, hire a professional cleaning service. Cleaning your home inside and out so it’s in move-in condition, is one of the most important prep and staging steps in getting your house ready to sell.
Increase Space in Most Important Rooms: The living room, kitchen and owner’s suite are generally the most important rooms to homebuyers. Remove any unnecessary furniture and personal items. Rearrange furniture to create more conversational spaces and make the rooms feel larger. Make sure the rooms are well lit and keep blinds open whenever the house will be shown.
Keep It Neutral: Update or remove area rugs and keep curtains and other furnishings and wall colors neutral for the broadest appeal. Dark colors aren’t appealing to everyone, and they make rooms appear smaller.
Update Hardware: If door and cabinet hardware look old and worn even after they’re cleaned, replace them with new hardware. Small details can make a big difference in how your home is perceived by prospective buyers.
Increase Curb Appeal of Home Exterior: Pressure wash the home’s exterior, decks, patios and driveway. Fill cracks in sidewalks and driveway and add sealant. Re-caulk windows, doors, siding and eves, if necessary, before touch-up painting. Clean the gutters and replace old and worn hardware and lighting fixtures. Replace outdoor patio furniture and add a few decorative elements. Trim trees and shrubs and replace any dead or dying shrubs and flowers with new ones and mow and edge the lawn. This will increase your home’s curb appeal and give it a better chance of appealing to more home buyers.
Remove Signs of Your Pets: Remove any pet toys, food dishes, water bowls and kitty litter. If possible, keep your pets out of the house while you are trying to sell it. Potential buyers may be allergic to cats and dogs and may smell pet odors that you don’t notice.
Keep It Fresh: Before an open house or showing put out fresh flowers and open some windows for at least 10 minutes to let in fresh air. Make sure bedding and towels are fresh, fluffed and neat and all flat surfaces are clean and clutter-free. Open blinds, turn on the lights and do a final check of the interior and exterior of the home.

Alternatives to Staging and Selling Your Home

If the thought of staging and selling your home seems a bit daunting, you may want to consider other options, especially if you are building a new home and want to coordinate closing on both homes. Companies like Opendoor make selling your home fast and easy and allow you to schedule your close date. This is perfect if you are having a home built and need to coordinate the sale of your current home with closing on your new home.

Epcon Communities

Epcon Communities partners with Opendoor to take the stress and hassle out of selling your home when buying or building a new home in one of our communities. This eliminates the need for a contingent offer and allows you to start construction on your new home as soon as possible. Being able to live in your current home until your new home is ready is one of the biggest advantages of using this service.

Opendoor will make an instant offer on your current home so you can get paid quickly giving you the cash you need to purchase your next home. They set up video walkthroughs and will take care of any necessary repairs which eliminates the need for staging or showing your home. And best of all, they allow you to choose your close date so you can move out of your old home and into your new home in one move.

Epcon Communities builds luxury single-level homes in communities throughout the country. We offer floorplans from 1,300 to over 3,000 square feet with 2-4 bedrooms and most of our communities include resort-style amenities, so you’re sure to find the perfect fit for your lifestyle.

If a low-maintenance adult lifestyle is appealing to you, contact us to learn more and explore all the benefits you get with an Epcon Communities home.