Techniques for Staging a Home for Sale

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Alicia Lowther, licensed real estate professional with Realty Executives and I'm going to discuss some techniques for staging a home. First of all what is professional staging? Professional stagers come in and depersonalize the house. They neutralize it so it appeals to the masses. A home buyer is only going to buy a home that they can visualize themselves living in, so that's the goal of a professional stager. It's different than interior decorating because an interior decorator personalizes the home to you and your lifestyle. With staging the focus is neutralized, depersonalized, and make it appeal to the masses. One of the first things if you hire a professional stager and they typically charge two to four hundred dollars, money well spent because studies show, that homes sell, or staged homes sell for three percent more than homes that weren't staged. But one of the first things they're going to do is recommend you start packing. Get rid of the clutter. You want people to see the home. You don't want them to see a lot of clutter, so you're moving anyway, this will give you a jump start. Go ahead, rent a storage unit if you have to, if you haven't already purchased your next home, or rent a POD. Start getting rid of it, eliminate. Also depersonalize, your pictures. They want to picture themselves, buyers want to picture themselves in your home. They don't want to see reminders of you and your family heirlooms all over. The next thing to tackle after the clutter would be cabinets and closets. The closets, if you open up a closet and things start falling out, that screams that there's not enough storage space in this home so make it very organized. Get rid of clothes that you're not using. Go through your kitchen, go through the cabinets. Also make minor repairs. You want everything to sparkle and shine. So if the sink is leaking, go ahead and fix it. Do things that are obvious. As I said you want things to sparkle and shine so clean things from the inside out. Clean the windows, do a deep clean. Go ahead clean the carpeting, just make it sparkle. And then lastly, curb appeal. You want people to know when they drive by and see that sign, you want it to look appealing from the outside so that they want to come in. My name is Alicia Lowther, licensed real estate professional, with Realty Executives discussing how to stage a home."