18 Home Staging Tips for 2021: Here’s What You Need To Know
Are you hosting an open house or looking for a way to increase value on your seller’s property? You might not be an interior designer, but staging a home is a great way to make a difficult sale stand out and sell faster.
We use staging to maximize the effect of a home’s best assets. In the same way, we also use staging to impress potential buyers and sell the property at the highest possible price. The point of staging is letting your buyer feel at home before they even make a purchase. Here are our top home staging tips.
Home Staging Tips: The Basics
Before we start talking about Home staging supplies and ideas, we first need to address the basics. Those include what staging is, what sets it apart from decoration, and why it is so important.
Home staging is preparing a home for potential buyers, to make it as appealing as possible. You will have to focus on kitchen and bathroom staging, as well as positioning in the living room and bedroom. These rooms are most important since they give a property a home-like feeling.
The difference between decoration and staging lies in appeal. Decorating appeals to you as the real estate agent, and staging appeals to all of your potential customers. Also, home staging is important because it will help you sell a property for a higher price and faster, only because the home looks well put together.
18 of Our Best Home Staging Trends in 2021
A professional can stage a home, or it can be you (the agent), just like the homeowner. To save money, you can always opt to do it yourself, especially if the commission is not substantial enough to hire a professional. That is why we put together this list of our favorite 18 home staging tips in 2021.
Tip #1: Clean
While moving furniture and starting to stage, you will find a few stains here and there. Cleaning a house before showing it is mandatory, especially if you are looking to lose home staging accessories like webs and dirt. You can hire a professional service, which will allow it to look as clean as possible. They should make sure all surfaces, from countertops to carpet, are clean and smell like new.
Tip #2: Declutter
The most obvious of all steps is decluttering. This shows we have well maintained the home in the past years. If your buyers see clutter, it will take their minds off the beautiful backyard. All they will focus on is the mess in the back. Also, it will leave the house looking smaller than it is. That is why homeowners need to box and remove as much of their personal belongings as possible.
Tip #3: Let Fresh Air in
Who wants to smell last night’s dinner or wet dog when they enter a home? Also, potential buyers could quite literally turn at the door if they smell cigarette smoke. That is why you need to let some fresh air into the apartment or house. This, along with airing out, will allow all the unpleasant odors to escape.
Tip #4: Freshen up the Space
Except for letting fresh air in, you can also liven the property by adding live plants or fresh flowers. This will give off a maintained look that will show your potential buyers we looked after the home. Make sure these home staging supplies are placed around the house strategically.
Tip #5: Remove Personal Items
Depersonalizing your home is an important step in letting your leads picture themselves living there. If family photos, kids’ toys, and art are still there, this would be hard to do. Especially since these items are reminding them that the home was inhabited by other families. Remember to keep clothes, medicine, and other personal items hidden away too.
Tip #6: Remove Odors
If after airing out the home, the unpleasant smells still didn’t disappear, try essential oils, candles, or ozone diffusers. Bad odors are a sign of misuse, especially if the bathroom smells musky. This tells the potential homeowners they will have to do some work themselves, and the value will surely decrease. Remember to not use chemical air fresheners, because they can cause asthma attacks.
Tip #7: Clean Sink
The kitchen sink is the first place to go while kitchen staging since most bad odors come from there. A home staging tip gem is to use a lemon to wipe down the sink and throw it down the garbage disposal. The grinding will allow the lemon’s smell to exit and freshen up the entire kitchen.
Tip #8: Define Rooms
In a home up for sale, defining rooms like the kid’s room, master bedroom, and guest room is a must. Each of these rooms should have one purpose. If you see a room being used for different purposes, try setting up both, taking pictures, and showing them to potential customers. The point of this step is to allow the buyer to see that each part of the home is usable.
Tip #9: Remove Wallpapers
The highest chances are that your potential buyers will not like the old wallpapers the previous homeowners put up. It’s best if you tear them down yourself. If not, your buyers will see this as another problem they have to fix themselves and will either try to decrease the value of your property or back out.
Tip #10: Paint Walls
Once you tear down the wallpapers, they will leave bare walls to look at. You should paint the walls in a neutral color. This way, we can transform the room into anything. Resist the urge to paint over wallpapers because the background can be wrinkled or multicolored.
Tip #11: Work With What you Have
Instead of renting out or buying new furniture that fits each of the rooms, try to work with what the previous homeowners used. If you love the kitchen table and how it looks in that space, leave it there. Remember that you don’t need to keep all the pieces, just the ones that fit the best and complement the room.
Tip #12: Add Carpets
Old carpets can be dull or even dirty, so adding a carpet that matches the color scheme and room size is a perfect idea. This way, you can emphasize the room’s size.
Tip #13: Size the Furniture
Make sure you don’t add too much furniture to your rooms, or they might feel too cluttered. Also, another of our home staging tips is to not add disproportionate furniture. If your room is too small, don’t add gigantic pieces of furniture, which will make it look even smaller.
Tip #14: Rent Furniture
If you don’t like the old setup of a room and are looking for a better way to define a room, you can always rent furniture. Furniture rentals are everywhere now, and a weekly or monthly rental would take only a small portion of the sales costs.
Tip #15: Let Natural Light in
When showcasing a home, open all the blinds and curtains. Natural light is a great way to show what a home offers. What doesn’t look better in natural light? This way, you can prevent your buyers from searching for light switches.
Tip #16: Turn the Lights On
Another unwritten rule that doesn’t save money on electricity bills is to turn the lights on. Even when closet or bathroom staging, it’s key to show the most light in each room. This way, your property will appear brighter and, therefore, more inviting to potential leads. Remember, if you see a broken light switch, these are easy fixes you can take part in yourself.
Tip #17: Tidy Up The Exterior
If you want to have a curb appeal for your property, you need to think about its exterior. This means tidying up the front lawn, trees and doing exterior fixes. While you can trim hedges, it is better to leave this work to the professionals. It will all be worth it, once you host an open house and find that you generated so many new leads, just by polishing the entrance.
Tip #18: Add the Final Touches
In the end, before you host an open house or want to showcase a home to potential customers, remember to add those finishing touches. Things like lighting candles, turning on the lights, or adding a fresh vase of flowers are things you need to do. Adding these last-minute touch-ups will let your property look well maintained and maximize its effect.
Conclusion
While home staging can be a lucrative and fun experience for you as a real estate agent, it can be the key factor in deciding if your property will sell fast. In the end, a staged home, where one feels cozy, is sure to go before an empty one or one cluttered with personal items from the current owner.
If you want to know more about Christian Saunders Real Estate and join our team, you can learn more here.