Staging your home is one of the best ways to sell your home so fast and for the most money. I’ve been to a few ad submissions where sellers tell me that some other real estate agent thought the house was good enough. Well, good enough is not what I want. I want your house to sell for full price and I want you to move on with your life quickly. The person who will buy your home should feel as if they have just entered their new home. This is the feeling I am looking for.
Here are some really good tips:
I have an approach that will work for every room in the house; you just have to go over it for each room. IMPORTANT: you look at each room from top to bottom, let’s start from the left and go to the right. Don’t look at the room as a whole, you need to methodically go over everything. The technique should be the same for all rooms:
1- Tabula Rasa. I’m going Latino here, but what I want you to do is remove anything that is not a piece of furniture or an accessory. Let me see my kitchen and I’ll tell you what I can do here. Top to Bottom: Remove the bottles from the top of the refrigerator and the beautiful plant from the cabinet. Take the magnet and the drawing of my nieces out of the fridge, put them on the counter. Take my personal photos off the wall. Remove knives, cutting board, plant, coffee pot, coffee cups, small oven, paper towel, wine bottle, cookies, and fruit basket from the counters. Wow, I never realized I had that much.
When you remove things from counters or furniture, you may not know where to put them. You may need to enclose them in a box. Make 3 boxes:
1. Mix
2. Storage
3. Sell.
You may also need to rent a storage unit at the time of publication. I don’t want your boxes in the garage. Many people look at the garage and if they are cluttered, they may not imagine where they can put their cars and how much space they have to do projects.
2- Clean and repair. I have granite in my kitchen and this is a great time to make it shine. Buy good products and clean everything from top to button. Starting from the light fixtures to the top of the refrigerator (I’m too short to see it, but there may be some taller people coming to see my house). Pay special attention to the sink, which I want to be spotless, open the oven and clean it (some ovens clean themselves), open the refrigerator and throw away everything old and clean it. Have someone clean the trash can and wash it. I don’t want any odor to come out of any part of your kitchen. Clean the floor. Repair leaky sinks, replace faulty light bulbs, and touch up paint if necessary. Don’t do big repairs, just small keys.
3- Give back a little love. Now that it is empty and clean, choose a couple of pieces to put back. Mainly flowers and plants and for the kitchen one (1) nice piece like a nice espresso machine. In the kitchen nothing happens in the cupboards.