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Startling Statistics Why You Need to Stage Your House

By Deane Alban

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 09Feb2010 Word count: 670 Viewed: 577 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

When selling your house, staging is the latest tool to make your house stand out from the rest and help buyers realize your home's potential. You can hire a home stager or do it yourself. Staging is a simply an advanced form of "rearranging your furniture". It's knowing what to remove, what to add, and how to rearrange what you've got to appeal to the majority of home buyers. And, besides, it can be lot of fun!

The evidence on why you should stage your house is overwhelming:

- A staged home will sell, on average, 17% higher than an unstaged home. (US Housing and Urban Development)

- Sellers who spent $500 on staging recovered over 343% of the cost when they sold their home. (Homegain.com)

- In controlled tests selling identical homes professionally staged vs. those not staged, the unstaged houses sold in 102 days, the staged houses sold in 45 days! (RealEstateStagingAssociation.com)

- It is estimated that only 10% of home buyers can visualize the potential of a home. So you can see that staging will help you sell your house fast and for top dollar.

Now let's talk about some easy, inexpensive staging tips. Let's go through your house, one area at a time. These are listed in order of relative importance.

Kitchen: Put away your dish detergent, sponges, oven mitts, dish cloth, fridge magnets, small appliances (toaster, blender). No food out unless you are serving it to your buyers or it is an attractive bowl of fruit or beautiful decanter. If you have a table or eat-in counter, set place settings using casual placemats, cloth napkins, plates, and glasses.

Bathrooms: Remove all your personal stuff. No hairdryers, brushes, toothbrushes, pill bottles, shower caps, or toiletry items unless they are beautiful. Any soap left out needs to be brand new. Put out your best towels. If you need a new shower curtain or liner, get a fabric curtain with a nylon liner. New plastic smells funny. People will look in your medicine cabinets. Remove any prescriptions drugs or anything personal you wouldn't want anyone to see. Your buyer doesn't need to know about your gastric reflux!

Living Room, Family Room: When buyers come to your house, turn off the TV. Turn on the stereo with some relaxing instrumental music. If you have a fireplace, light it if it's cold out. If you have some attractive books and a large table, leave a few tastefully arranged. If you have a TV in the living room as well as the family room, you might want to store the one in the living room. Don't worry, this is only temporary.

Dining Room: Put an attractive centerpiece such as a bouquet of fresh flowers, a flowering live plant, or a silk flower arrangement on your table. Polish your chandelier until it sparkles. If you don't already have one, a dimmer switch is inexpensive, easy to install, and adds a touch of luxury.

Bedrooms: Move the TV out or hide it. Make your bed. No busy bedspreads. You want the buyers to notice your room and not your bedspread. Lots of pillows and shams overwhelm a room and draw your attention to the bed, not the room. Shuffle your beds to make all the bedrooms look bigger! If you have a king size bed in your master bedroom and a queen or a double in a guest room, put your king in storage (or disassemble and store in your basement) and move the smaller bed in. It will make both rooms look much larger.

In a pinch you can even put an inflatable bed on an inexpensive frame for guest rooms. Then make the bed up as usual!

Back porch or deck: If weather permits, stage an outdoor table setting. Have some pretty potted plants on your deck or porch.

When selling your house, staging is the "icing on the cake". It will help sell your house faster, for more money and will increase the pool of buyers. It helps the "other" 90% visualize your home's potential!

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