by Farley Webmaster | Jun 20, 2023
When it comes to selling your home, first impressions matter. Properly staging your property can significantly increase its appeal to potential buyers, resulting in a quicker and more successful sale. In this blog post, we will explore effective home staging tips that will help you showcase your property in the best possible light. By following these expert strategies, you can create a welcoming and enticing environment that will capture buyers’ attention and expedite the selling process.
Declutter and Depersonalize
One of the fundamental aspects of home staging is decluttering and depersonalizing your space. Remove excess furniture, personal items, and knick-knacks to create a clean and spacious atmosphere. Potential buyers want to envision themselves living in the house, so it’s essential to minimize distractions and allow them to focus on the property’s features.
Home Staging Tips: Enhance Curb Appeal
Enhance Curb Appeal
First impressions begin at the curb, so make sure your home’s exterior is inviting and well-maintained. Trim the lawn, plant colorful flowers, and apply a fresh coat of paint to the front door to create an appealing facade. Adding some outdoor furniture or potted plants can also enhance the overall curb appeal and create an inviting atmosphere.
Maximize Natural Light
Lighting can significantly impact the perception of a space. Open curtains and blinds to let in as much natural light as possible. If necessary, clean windows to maximize brightness and remove any obstructions that could hinder the entry of natural light. Well-lit rooms feel more spacious and inviting, increasing the overall appeal of your home.
Neutralize Colors and Decor
While you may love bold colors and unique decor, it’s best to opt for neutral tones and styles when staging your home. Neutral colors create a blank canvas that allows potential buyers to envision their own furniture and personal style in the space. Consider repainting walls in soft, neutral hues and using neutral-colored furnishings and decor to create a universally appealing aesthetic.
Home Staging Tips: Focus on Key Rooms like the Living Room
Focus on Key Rooms
Certain rooms have a more significant impact on buyers than others. Pay extra attention to staging the living room, kitchen, and master bedroom. These areas tend to be the focal points of a home, and creating a warm, inviting atmosphere can leave a lasting impression. Rearrange furniture to create conversational seating arrangements, add fresh flowers, and incorporate tasteful decor to highlight the room’s best features.
Highlight Functional Spaces
Today’s buyers often look for homes that offer functionality and versatility. Showcase any multifunctional spaces in your home to demonstrate its potential. Convert an underutilized corner into a cozy reading nook or transform a spare room into a home office. By showing buyers how they can adapt the space to their needs, you increase the value and desirability of your property.
Create a Welcoming Ambiance
During showings or open houses, create a warm and inviting ambiance throughout the home. Play soft background music, use scented candles or air fresheners with subtle fragrances, and add plush, comfortable textures through throw pillows and blankets. These small touches create a pleasant sensory experience and make potential buyers feel at ease while exploring your property.
Home Staging Tips: Enhance the Appeal of Outdoor Spaces
Enhance the Appeal of Outdoor Spaces
Outdoor areas can significantly contribute to a home’s overall appeal. Stage outdoor spaces such as patios, decks, and gardens to showcase their potential for relaxation and entertainment. Arrange outdoor furniture, add cushions and throw pillows, and set up a cozy outdoor dining area. Enhancing these spaces extends the living area of your home and allows buyers to envision enjoying outdoor activities in their new property.
Pay Attention to Details
In the staging process, don’t overlook the importance of paying attention to details. Replace outdated fixtures, repair any visible damages, and ensure that every room is spotlessly clean. Small details like fresh flowers, art on the walls, or a well-placed mirror can make a significant difference in elevating the overall aesthetic appeal of your home.
Professional Photography and Virtual Tours
In today’s digital age, quality visuals are crucial for attracting potential buyers. Hire a professional photographer to capture high-quality images of your staged home. These photos will be used for online listings, brochures, and marketing materials. Additionally, consider offering virtual tours to allow remote buyers to experience the property virtually, providing them with an immersive and detailed viewing experience.
Effective home staging can be the key to a successful and swift sale of your property. By implementing these staging tips, you can create an inviting and appealing environment that captures buyers’ attention and helps them envision their future in your home. Remember to declutter, neutralize colors, enhance curb appeal, and pay attention to details. When you work with John Farley Real Estate, you have exclusive home selling tools at your disposal, such as Compass Concierge. Compass Concierge offers sellers a unique opportunity to access professional staging services and other home improvement services without any upfront costs. By leveraging this program, sellers can enhance their homes, attract more buyers, and potentially sell their properties faster and at a higher price. With careful planning and execution, your staged home will stand out in the market, attract potential buyers, and increase your chances of a quick and successful sale.
Reach out to the John Farley team today if you’re ready to sell your home and want to ensure it sells quickly and for top dollar!
by Farley Webmaster | Jun 11, 2019
We all want to be good neighbors. But when it comes to selling your home, it’s not just about “keeping up with the Joneses.” It’s about outshining them at every opportunity!
If you’re looking to sell your home fast and for the most money possible, you’ll need a strategy to set it apart from all the other listings competing for buyers in your area. That’s why we’ve outlined our proven, five-step plan for serious sellers.
Use these five tactics to help your listing get noticed, win over buyers, and net a higher sales price than your neighbors!
STEP 1: Stage Your Home to Show Its Full Potential
The average seller will do the minimum to prepare their home for market: clean and declutter, fix anything that’s broken, mow the lawn. And while those tasks are essential, today’s buyers want more than just a clean house and tidy yard. When they dream of buying a new home, they envision a designer house with modern finishes. Help them see your property’s full potential by staging it.
Home staging is one of the hottest trends in real estate—because it works! According to the Real Estate Staging Association, homes that are professionally staged spend 73% less time on the market.1
So what exactly is staging? In a broad sense, staging is the act of preparing your home for market. The goal is to highlight your home’s strengths, minimize any deficiencies, and help buyers envision themselves living in the space. When staging a home, you might rearrange the furniture to make a room feel larger or remove heavy curtains to make it appear brighter.
Some sellers choose to hire a professional home stager, who has specialized training and experience, to maximize the appeal of their home to the largest number of potential buyers. Others may opt to do it themselves, using guidance from their agent.
We can help you determine the appropriate budget and effort required to push your home ahead of the competition in your neighborhood. The good news is, an investment in staging pays off. A 2018 survey found that 85% of staged homes sold for 6-25% more than their unstaged neighbors homes.2
STEP 2: Draw Buyers in with High-Quality Listing Photos
You only have one chance to make a first impression with potential buyers. And many buyers will view photos of a listing before they decide whether or not to visit it in person. In fact, 87% of buyers find photos “very useful” in their home search.3 Poor-quality or amateur-looking listing photos could keep buyers from ever stepping through your door.
Since good photography plays such an important role in getting your property noticed, we only work with the top local professionals to photograph our listings. But we don’t just rely on their photography skills when it comes to showcasing your home.
We go the extra mile to ensure your listing photos showcase the true essence of your home. We’re always on site during the photo shoot to help the photographer capture the best angles and lighting, and to let them know about unique or compelling selling features that they should photograph. The extra effort pays off in the end. In fact, listings with high-quality photography sell 32% faster than the competition … and often for more money!4
STEP 3: Price It Properly From the Start
Even in a strong real estate market, there are homes that will sit unsold for months on end. This can be the “kiss of death” in real estate, as buyers tend to imagine that there must be something wrong with the property, even if it’s not the case.
But why are those houses still on the market in the first place? It’s because they are often priced too high.
Every buyer has a budget. And most will be viewing listings within a particular price range. If your property is overpriced, it can’t properly compete with the other houses they’re viewing that are priced correctly. Which means it’ll sit on the market until you’re eventually forced to drop the price.
Alternatively, if you price your home aggressively, it can be among the nicest homes that buyers have seen within their budget. This can lead to emotionally-attached buyers, who are often willing to pay a premium or settle for fewer seller concessions. And in certain markets, it can lead to a multiple-offer situation, or bidding war. The end result? More money in your pocket.
We can help you determine the ideal listing price for your home in the current market. Pricing it properly in the beginning is the best way to ensure a fast and profitable sale.
STEP 4: Put on a Good Show at Each Showing
Once buyers are interested enough to schedule a visit, it’s crucial that you put on a good show at each showing.
The first step is to make your home readily available—and often on short notice—for buyers to see it. A missed showing is a missed opportunity to sell your home. If you set too many restrictions on when it’s available to view, busy buyers will simply skip over your listing and move on to the next one.
Part of making your home available means keeping it relatively show-ready as long as it’s on the market. Most of us don’t live picture-perfect lives, and our homes reflect the day-to-day reality of our busy (and sometimes messy) families. But a little extra effort spent keeping your home clean, fresh-smelling, and ready for buyers will help it sell faster … which means you can get back to your regular routine as quickly as possible!
STEP 5: Use a Proven Promotion Plan
Most agents are still marketing their listings like they did 20 years ago … put a sign in the yard, put the listing in the MLS, and pray that it sells. Yet, we know that 93% of buyers search for real estate listings online.3
That’s why we invest in the latest training and technology—to ensure your listing appears in the places where buyers are most likely to look. Our dual-level promotion strategy includes both pre-launch activities designed to seed the marketplace and post-listing activities to ensure your home stays top-of-mind with potential buyers.
By utilizing online and social marketing platforms to connect with consumers and offline channels to connect with local real estate agents, your property gets maximum exposure to prospective buyers.
LET’S GET MOVING
Are you thinking about listing your home? Get a head start on your competition! Contact us for a copy of our Home Seller’s Guide, which offers a complete guide to the home selling process. Or call us to schedule a free no-commitment consultation. We’d love to put together a custom plan to maximize the sales potential of your property!
Sources:
- Real Estate Staging Association – https://www.realestatestagingassociation.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=304550&module_id=164548
- Home Staging Resources –
https://www.homestagingresources.com/2018-home-staging-statistics/
- National Association of Realtors –
https://www.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/2018-real-estate-in-a-digital-world-12-12-2018.pdf
- RIS Media –
https://rismedia.com/2018/12/12/shocking-stats-importance-photography-real-estate/
