How to Assist a Professional Home Stager

A home stager is a real-estate professional who helps home sellers prepare their residences to go on the open market. They aim to assist sellers in making their properties as attractive as possible in a short period of time to increase the chances of a quick sale. Home staging exploded in the United States in the 1990s, and today it is viewed as an essential step in successful residential real-estate marketing.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Paint or wallpaper
• Storage space for excess furniture

1. Think like a home stager. The typical home buyer decides within the first 10 seconds of seeing a home whether or not she likes it and is interested in buying it. Thus, you can assist your home stager by paying close attention to the front exterior features of your home. So-called "curb appeal" is vital, as is a well-manicured lawn and a clean front facade.
2. Leave your home furnished. While your home stager will certainly give you tips on ways to rearrange your furniture to make the most of your interior space, studies show that home buyers are more likely to buy a home when it's furnished during an open house. It is thought that home buyers respond better when they actually see how the space could be used, rather than having to imagine how they would fill a vacant room.
3. Expect to do some rearranging to create a sense of flow and open space in the furnished rooms of your home. Clutter is claustrophobic and can turn off buyers.
4. Remove inessential items of furniture from all rooms to add to the sense of open space. For example, you'll probably want to leave a bed, desk and dresser in a bedroom, but you should strip the walls of any personalized items like photographs, posters or school diplomas. Get rid of small items of furniture, like end tables and chairs, to facilitate openness and allow the buyer to imagine what he would do with the space--rather than focus on what you did with it.
5. Paint or wallpaper your walls in neutral colors if you're staging a low- to mid-range home. Be a little bolder if you're marketing a high-end home. Though it's not known why, statistical evidence suggests that high-end home buyers prefer bold decorative choices, while neutral, subtle color schemes attract buyers in the lower and middle ranges.
6. Open your curtains. Flooding rooms in natural light makes home interiors much more attractive to buyers. It's one of the simplest things you can do to assist your home stager.
7. Tidy up your backyard, driveway and garage. Sweep away collected dirt, mow your back lawn and perform some garden pruning if you have runaway plant growth on your property. The same principles apply to garage interiors as home interiors, so aim to create a space that's free of clutter and open, bright and airy.

Tips & Warnings

• Work with a certified staging professional (CSP). You can find one in your area by using the listings feature at CSPTraining.com (see Resources below).