Archive for Furniture
Dec
03
The Fine Art of Making Your Home Look Good
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Just a couple of years ago, very few people had heard of home staging. But once a good thing is discovered, it just takes off, and that’s what has happened with this method of preparing a home fore sale.
As top home stagers point out, clutter is the enemy, and beauty will attract buyers. That’s what home staging is all about: getting rid of clutter and making your home shine. The goal is to get a prospective buyer to imagine themselves living in your home. If they can do this, they are only a step away from actually buying it. Home staging makes sure a buyer can see your home for what it is, not just what you’ve made it over the time you’ve lived there.
What all this means is that home staging involves a certain neutralizing of a home. What I mean is that the really personal aspects you have added to your home need to be removed or dulled down, replaced with tasteful decorations that enhance the home, not a certain personality. For example, let’s say you’ve got a lot of family pictures all over the walls and tables of your home. These pictures make you feel good, remind you of the people you love, and give your family and friends the impression of being loved and appreciated. Great! But when your home is for sale, it is open for viewing by the buying public. To them, these very personal symbols of your life can be a bit overwhelming. They might be trying to look at the moldings but getting caught on the eyes of your family on their last beach vacation. This will turn them off buying your home, because they won’t be able to imagine themselves living in it.
However removing clutter doesn’t mean creating an empty house. Frequently, home stagers are hired when a home has been vacated, to help it look more user-friendly, if you will. Empty room scan feel barren, while tastefully arranged furniture provides visual interest, and also helps give the room some perspective. Home stagers will rent furniture, or use some from their personal collection, to fill out an empty home.
A similar theory applies to rooms like spare bedrooms. If you have a blank and undecorated bedroom, and your biggest market is with families, try dressing the room up a little bit to look like a child’s bedroom. Obviously this doesn’t mean making a mess, but adding a dresser and a teddy bear on the bed can help buyers visualize the bedroom in a way they are more likely to use it. With other spare rooms, if you’ve been using them for storage, remove all traces of this. Consider setting the room up like an office, exercise area, or laundry area, even if this isn’t what you used it for. Again, it will give potential buyers the idea that there is so much they could do with the space, as opposed to an empty room that just looks depressing.
I mentioned that home stagers will often rent furniture. They will do this even if your home is not empty. Often, especially when we have lived in the same house for a long time, or we have pets, our furniture is a little rough around the edges. While they might still be perfectly comfortable, and you might barely notice, shabby furniture can give the appearance of a shabby home. That’s why home stagers will often give a home a fresh paint job, suggest some basic repairs, and then rearrange and/or replace some of the furniture to give the home a fresh and current look. This is what buyers want, no matter the cost of the home.
The industry is starting to show that home staging pays off, and that well staged homes sell faster and for more money than un-staged homes in the same area. Consider investing a bit of time and money before your home goes up for sale. You’ll be glad you did.
Real Estate Professionals
Nov
26
Top 10 Inexpensive Tips to Getting your Home Ready to Sell
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1) Leave - This is THE most important thing you can do as a seller. Nothing will make a potential buyer feel more uncomfortable than you being in the house. If the buyers like the house then they are picturing themselves living in the house, picturing if their furniture will fit in the house, and picturing what rooms their children will choose. If the seller is in the house they can’t do any of this because they feel like a guest. This is the last thing you want your buyers to feel - GET OUT!
2) De-Clutter – This is another simple thing that you can do that will make a huge impact. Most sellers have been in their house for many years and have collected all kinds of things. You need to either get rid of them or store them; this will make your house seem larger than another house that is cluttered with the same square footage. You are planning on moving anyway, so why not start a little early and make your house more sellable?
3) Clean – Believe it or not, this is a different category than de-clutter. This is one of the hardest things to do but also one of the most important. If a buyer comes to look at your house and the bathroom is dirty, the carpets are a mess, and it has a bad aroma, it just leaves a bad impression. Clean up the kid’s toys, put away anything that will fit into a drawer or a cabinet and make it look as if you don’t live there. Clean and pickup every time someone is coming to look at your house.
4) Paint – This is another cheap and very effective tool that can help your home sell quickly. Painting is one of the best returns on your investment when you are selling your home. There are two issues that should be addressed when getting your home ready to sell. The first is the easiest: make sure you touch up all the paint on the interior and exterior of your home. The second may call for you to be a bit more objective about your home. What kind of colors you have selected? Do you have eight different colors in your house? Unless you are an interior designer, you really need to consider repainting all of your rooms to a neutral beige or brown color. While this may be a feature of your home that you love, the average buyer will not like your color selections. Paint your walls a neutral beige or brown color which will make your house appear larger and will also appeal to the majority of buyers.
5) Landscape – Everyone has heard this before “curb appeal”. It is a cliché, but it makes a huge difference. Buyers begin to form their opinions of your house when they see it from the outside. Make sure your grass looks perfect - pull any weeds, edge the sidewalks and driveway, plant some inexpensive annual flowers that add color to the landscaping, and put some new mulch down in the plant beds. This will not only add curb appeal to your house but also add VALUE when they are driving their friends and family by to “check it out”.
6) Wallpaper – TAKE IT DOWN!!! Wallpaper has made a bit of a resurgence lately; but for the most part it is outdated and with the myriad of selections out there, it is extremely personal. Most buyers will prefer a different selection, so go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy some DIF (wallpaper remover) and get rid of it.
7) Closets – Like it not, buyers are going to look in your closets and this can be a major selling point for some people. So when you are de-cluttering don’t throw everything in your closets! With the many different options out there you can rent a “POD” system, a storage unit, or simply store it in a friend/family’s home while your house is on the market.
Carpets – Get them professionally cleaned. It is not that expensive and can make a world of difference.9) Pressure Wash - Pressure wash the exterior of your house, your sidewalks and your driveway. It just makes everything sparkle and seem newer. Remember, CURB APPEAL!
10) Remove Non-Essentials – The idea here is to make it so that the buyer can see themselves living here – not your family. Remove your family photos and get rid of any large furniture that does not add to the look of the house or the room. Try to make it look like a builder’s model home.
© Michael Taylor
Rent Back
Sep
10
Home Prep Needed for Great Sales
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If you are considering putting your home on the market, realize that it will take some preparation to get your home up to show quality. Experience is proving that when a home is staged, it can bring in up to many thousands of dollars more than the asking price. Also, staging helps in all types of markets. When there are a glut of homes for sale in an area, what they call a buyer’s market, the home that’s staged is more noticable to buyers, and the price for it can’t be low-balled the same as a house that doesn’t look as good. Alternatively, in what they call a seller’s market, when there are few homes for sale and real estate is in high demand, staged homes again stand out, often attracting numerous offers. In this way, the price can get driven up as buyers compete with each other for the home. Either way, the homeowner who took the time to stage comes out the winner.
Home staging can mean different things. Everything from just de-cluttering a home, or a rearrangement of furnature, up to making minor repairs, or even completely emptying the house and renting new furnature, are all considered efforts to stage a home. It appears that the more effort, and money, one puts into staging the home, the more they are repayed for their efforts when the home sells. Not only that, staged homes tend to sell much more quickly than as-is homes.
While many people these days are choosing to hire a professional home stager, and whether or not you can afford that is up to you. Professionals certainly have good ideas, and the experience to know what works and what doesn’t. However, there’s no reason you can’t do the prep work yourself, with a bit of research and applied effort.
There area few key elements to home staging that tend to be universal. First and foremost, getting rid of excess furniture and knick knacks seems to be key. A cluttered house becomes invisable to a viewer, blanketed under the acoutrements of someone elses life. If necessary, rent storage for all your extra stuff. If you have a storage room, empty it, or set it up to look like an office or wieght room, to highlight features you don’t use, but someone else might love. Sometimes all that’s needed is an objective rearranging of your things to create more space and order.
Another key area is repairs. Don’t launch into major renovations, but do fix up really obvious minor flaws, especially around the front door. First impressions are key. Keep in mind that people viewing your home will likely open cupboards and closets. Repair squeeks and sticks so they don’t notice a problem. Since doorways have a tendencey to get worn, consider new paint.
If you’re planning to sell your home, you might want to do a little research online to help with your staging ideas, or even look into hiring a professional in your area. No doubt you’ll be glad you did.
Repossession
