A guide to staging a house before selling
Table Of Content
NAR will also require brokers to enter into written agreements with their buyers to help consumers understand what services will be provided, and at what cost. Because not all sellers stage their homes—especially homes in lower price ranges—you’ll be at an advantage if you elect to take the extra step of staging your property. Your personal objects make it more difficult for buyers to connect with your home and imagine themselves living there.
Always opt for a neutral interior
If you have a dining room, you don’t need to set your table with your finest dishes, but you should make your formal dining room feel like one. Be sure your table is free of dust and use a neutral table runner to bring everything together. Check out our comprehensive list of letter templates to send to buyers, FSBOs, owners of expired listings, and more. Plus we share actionable tips you can use to write your own lead-generating copy.
Staging a house for sale: A seller’s guide
So, on a $750,000 home, that’s another $7,500 in expenses before you get the keys. It’s important to note that this figure does not include lender fees, which can add thousands of additional dollars in expenses. Make sure you compare lenders in California to find an option that offers a combination of competitive APR and low fees. With most home buyers finding their homes online, professional photography is also important. Preparing your home and staging your home before selling is equally important.
How to Stage Your Home for Sale: 12 Expert Tips
Of course, the most cost-effective way to stage a home is to DIY the staging. True, you may not see the same amazing home sale price increases as you would if you’d let a pro do the work. Of course, staging only pays if it costs you less to do than you’ll make in profit, so let’s dive into a little crash course on how to crunch the numbers. The whole point of staging is to create a welcoming environment that showcases the house (instead of its current occupants) so that buyers can more easily envision themselves living there. Check out these house-staging secrets from an expert and maximize your chances of your home selling at a good price.
The only items you might need to buy are organizational tools like decorative baskets, boxes, hangers, or storage racks. But if your closets are currently crammed to the ceiling with your things, your home will look short on storage space. So your staging goal for closets needs to be emptying them until they’re no more than 50% full. And don’t forget to hang fresh, fluffy towels on the towel bar, and put out a brand new, soap scum-free soap dispenser on the vanity as the clean and serene finishing touches. Bathrooms are perhaps the most overlooked space when it comes to staging—because the tub, shower, toilet, sink are staying put unless you do a full remodel. While you may not be able to rearrange the big-ticket items, bathroom staging has endless possibilities.
Evaluate Your Space
A home that’s not staged will force a buyer to look past all of the seller’s possessions to imagine the home as theirs. Photos of a properly staged home look better in online listings, which help sell the property. It’s also a good idea to wipe down the kitchen sink with half a lemon, then grind it in the garbage disposal to remove sink odors. While you could use an air freshener to deodorize your home, it’s best to avoid these since they can trigger allergic reactions and asthma in sensitive people. If you’re a smoker and you normally smoke indoors, start limiting your smoking to outside the home and take extra steps to deodorize indoors. Staging a house is one of the easiest and best ways to add value.
Staging a bedroom
You should arrange your furniture and decor in such a way that makes these unique details immediately obvious to the buyer. Flanking your fireplace with chairs, hanging neutral and airy curtains to frame your window, and using lighting to your advantage will draw attention to what’s amazing about your home. Cleaning these areas with warm soapy water made of gentle dish soap with degreaser usually gets the job done.
I placed a few photos with the virtually painted walls in the MLS listing and had an offer accepted within three days. While we’re talking about kitchen cabinets, consider replacing the handles and drawer pulls too. It may seem like a simple detail, but your potential buyers will notice. Replacing old, worn, or dated hardware with some new modern pulls will make the kitchen feel fancy. When you’re staging a home, always remember that you are presenting your buyer with a fantasy of what their home could be, not how they might actually live.
Don’t Go Overboard With Repairs
However, when you are staging your home, you are transforming your home so it is more appealing to a larger group of buyers and not one's specific taste. There are many different tips, tricks, and techniques for staging a house. Home staging can be an opportunity to show potential buyers it’s actually functional by finding a fun way to show it off. Turn a short wall into a chalkboard family message center, transform an alcove into a charming workspace, or display a hanging planter to bring life and texture to a bare nook. But not just some light dusting—think spring-cleaning on steroids.
After the home sells, the stager then returns to remove the furniture and decor from the home. With more affordably priced homes, like the ones I typically sell, I help the seller with my consultation and have them do most of the work without a professional stager. They rely on my expertise and experience for direction and do the work themselves.
Why Spending $100K to Stage a House in Los Angeles Makes Sense - Hollywood Reporter
Why Spending $100K to Stage a House in Los Angeles Makes Sense.
Posted: Sun, 05 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]
I spent more time in that room than I should have and didn’t remember much else about the home. I had a similar experience when the sellers had two big, gorgeous dogs in kennels inside the home. Because LA is such a complex market, it’s important to find a real estate agent who can help you make sense of the real estate scene. A local agent or Realtor will have a firm grasp of how quickly homes are going to contract, which areas are seeing more or less activity and when sellers might be close to dropping their prices. In addition to covering a down payment, you’ll need to have enough cash to cover your portion of the closing costs on a home in Los Angeles. Data from ClosingCorp shows that the average closing costs in California added up to 1 percent of the purchase price in 2021.
However, it’s important to understand that a bigger down payment will make a huge difference in your monthly mortgage payment. In addition to spending time in your own neighborhood, it’s important to factor in how long it will take you to get elsewhere – especially your office. LA has notoriously bad traffic, although the city’s metro — yes, it does have one — is currently under expansion in preparation for hosting the Olympics in 2028. For now, though, you’re going to want to consider your daily commute to avoid spending too long in the car and too much on gas. While LA is the opposite of “bargain,” there are pockets where you can find a cheaper place to call home.
Painting your walls gives you a fresh backdrop to showcase your staging efforts, especially if you choose one of these nine neutral colors. Staging a more modest home will cost closer to $1,500 to $2,500. That price often comes down by a couple hundred with referral discounts from hiring your agent-recommended professional stager. So if you’re selling a home that would net you $300,000 unstaged—staging has the potential to net you an extra $15,000 on the low 5% end, all the way up to $75,000 on the high 25% end.
They’ll be shocked to see the difference a good scrubbing of the driveway, sidewalks, and facade makes. I also keep the names and phone numbers of contractors on my phone at all times so I can share them with my clients. I know what home inspectors look for so I can usually point out things I notice, like wood rot around the door, leaking faucets, or an old roof.
But when you’re staging your home, be prepared for buyers to look behind closed doors and open random drawers. Nothing is off-limits since they’re trying to see if your home can become theirs. One of the simplest things you can do to stage your home is to show off its space, not your stuff.
The median time a home spent on the market in the LA metro area was 23 days in September – a sizable jump from 10 days just one year earlier. Plus, Redfin data shows that the percentage of sellers in the area who have dropped their prices has been increasing since February. Buying a house isn’t the same as buying, say, groceries or clothing.
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