It doesn't take long for a prospective buyer to form an opinion about your house. Here's how you can tilt the odds in your favor by making your home appeal to the widest clientele possible.
You don't have much time.
Prospective home buyers form an opinion about the home you're selling in 15 seconds, by one estimate. And the clock starts ticking at the curb -- even before the home buyers get in the house. So how do you tilt the playing field in your favor? Increasingly, it's by staging your home.
Generally speaking, staging means making your home as appealing as possible, as quickly as possible, to the broadest clientele you can.
There are techniques to pulling this off -- some of them obvious, and some not so apparent. We polled the experts to get some of their top tips.
Staging as un-decorating
Staging takes some effort and some money -- but it works. According to a study of 2,772 properties sold in eight California cities in 1999 that was done by real-estate broker Joy Valentine, staged homes remained on the market less than half the time that unstaged homes did -- about 14 days versus 31 days. The average difference in sale price over list price for staged homes was 6.3%, versus 1.6% for unstaged homes. You stand to gain $9,000 on a $200,000 house, Dana and co-author Marcia Layton Turner point out in their book, "The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Staging your Home to Sell."
Here's what you need to understand about staging: "How you decorate to live in your house and how you decorate to sell your house are very different," explains Dana. Decorating implies adding. But staging is all about paring away personal decoration. Why? Because the driving idea behind staging is to let people imagine themselves living in your home, leading the good life. It's NOT about you and your stuff and your taste.
Nearly everything in staging sprouts from this basic idea.
The Tips
1. Declutter.
This is staging's golden rule. Clutter isn't just your average mess. Clutter is the so-called "visual dandruff" -- newspapers, mail, laundry, knickknacks -- that accumulates in a house that's well-lived-in.
This mantra also applies to furniture. A good rule of thumb is that a staged living room should have half of its furniture removed, to give a better sense of spaciousness and movement, says Van Cott Speight. What to do with it? You're moving, so pull a storage pod into the driveway and pack it up.
Streamline the kitchen counters, too, says Sally Ann Possidente-Ruiz, a real-estate agent and staging professional who works mostly in New York’s Westchester and Putnam counties. "I'll give you a coffeepot. But put away the toaster and the toaster oven. You don't need it. You want sleek, clean lines. And you want them to say, 'Wow, look at the counter space.' "
2. Be a neat freak.
This may go without saying, but the only thing as important as decluttering is having an immaculate house. That means steam-cleaning the carpets. Walls should be painted if needed. Pressure-washing outdoor decks and aluminum siding can do wonders for a home's first impression and boost a home's value, Dana says. One place homeowners can never clean enough is the bathroom, stagers say. Toss out that bath mat; it's probably a wreck. Declutter it ruthlessly, add a few candles, and hide all but one or two of the shampoo bottles, says Possidente-Ruiz.
3. Hide the sword collection.
Another name sometimes used for staging is "blanding," and there's a reason for it: Now's the time to sell your space, not your personal tastes, because you never know what may turn off would-be buyers. "It's got to appeal to everyone," says Peggy Selinger-Eaton, one of the founders of professional staging and author of "Staging your Home for Profit," as well as founder the Web site "Peggy's Corner."
Remove family photos and religious items. Possidente-Ruiz remembers one Jewish home buyer who visited a condo and came away with little impression except of the crucifixes and pictures of the owner's First Communion that were inside. He bought a condo in the same complex that needed more work, she says.
4. Search and destroy odors.
A popular saying coined by Schwarz of StagedHomes.com is, "If you can smell it, we can't sell it." A house that smells odd to a prospective homeowner -- whether because of a cat's litter box, or dogs, or exotic food -- can easily be a deal breaker. Ask someone you trust to give you an honest answer whether your home has a distinct odor. Then tackle the problem, by steam-cleaning the carpets and furniture, moving litter boxes elsewhere, scrubbing the kitchen, etc. Finally, don't try to mask anything with potpourri, or by baking cookies. Just open windows a few minutes before a showing to let in fresh air.