Prepare Your Home for Sale
Thinking of selling your place? Maybe your decision has already been made! You can
de-stress the whole process by enlisting the expertise of a professional home-staging team. By updating your abode, you can fatten your wallet and save yourself from worrying.
Showing a home does interrupt your daily life and so the less time your home is on the market, the better. You want your place to look so sexed up that people are bidding on it in a panic to buy! Home stagers know how to give it curb appeal so that when someone drives by they want to come inside and see the rest.
You can also take on many home staging techniques yourself if you have the time and would like to save some labour costs. Simple things such as cleaning up the yard, getting rid of clutter, and applying a fresh coat of paint, add value to your home. Check out the new pre-mixed paint kits in rich neutral tones and try using them to give your home a flow of harmonizing color.
A touch of light colored paint can open up any space, including the hallways, an often neglected but important link in making your home appear larger and more user friendly. Just the right shade of paint can give the illusion of spaciousness; for example, a hallway can become an art gallery with nice lighting and tastefully framed paintings.
You want your home to appeal to as many people as possible so keep it simple and refreshing. You want your home to look so appealing that you would buy it yourself!
Home Staging - Living Room
When preparing your home for sale it's the living room that will create the ambiance for your entire home. Buyers walking through your home will get a feel for it in the living room, the hub of the home.
Home staging experts recommend that you choose a color scheme that is relaxing, and re-vitalizing. There are pre-mixed paint kits available which greatly reduce the stress of "what color should we paint it?" Professionals have selected colors which compliment each other beautifully. When painting for resale purposes keep in mind that you want it to appeal to the next owners as well. There are many lovely "neutral" colors which aren't bland.
Lighting should be gentle on the eyes with a good reading lamp in a stategic location. The more natural light you can lend to your living room, the better. Perhaps keep your draperies to a minimum so that simple, natural light graces your furniture and floors.
Quite often when someone is planning on listing their home, be it a townhome, garden apartment, or full-sized house, they'll remove the old carpet and replace it with laminate or wood flooring. This opens up your room, updates your home, and when you see what's under the old carpet, you'll be glad you've replaced it with something easier to keep clean and attractive. The value it adds can be retrieved from the sale of your home.
If you're a pet-lover and you want your home to show well without becoming a drill sergeant, just place a large, soft towel or blanket over your sofa and fold it up with the hair and all when someone comes by for a showing. Home staging means your home is aesthetically pleasing and user friendly!
Your home is your refuge. It's important to look forward to relaxing and spending quality time in a nurturing environment. The living room can be this sanctuary!
Staging Your Home for Sale
When listing your home for sale this spring the place to start sprucing it up is from the outside - in! Spring cleaning can lift your home out of the winter blues and blahs just as easily as washing your windows. Start outside using a mixture of 1 bucket of warm water, 1 cup of ammonia, and 1 tablespoon of dish soap. Apply with a sponge then shine with newsprint or paper towels. Voila! The first step to staging your home is complete. Now you'll be inspired to keep going.
When someone first steps into your home the first impression they get is when they first step into your home! In other words, the foyer, or entrance way, needs to feel welcoming, spacious, clean and enticing. If this is a place where everyone takes off their shoes and leaves them to trip over, start training the troops to put their footwear in the closet. There, it's out of sight but still convenient for everyone.
Experts agree that there's nothing better than a fresh coat of paint to renew your home for the prospective buyer. And if you're worried that maybe you don't have color matching savvy or that you're not sure of the latest color trends, there are now paint kits available with beautiful, trendy colors pre-matched for you.
General home staging tips include de-cluttering in order to create the illusion of more space. Whether it's the bathroom or the kitchen, the tip is the same: clear the deck! Put things in baskets and tuck them away where they're easily accessible. When you simplify by de-cluttering, others can imagine your home belonging to them and that's precisely what you want!
