With the holidays over and the Greater Toronto Area spring Real Estate market quickly approaching, many homeowners who are listing their home for sale are pondering what they can do to get their homes ready to sell faster than the competition.
Television Programs like Take this House and SELL It!, House Doctor (UK), The Stagers and the Unsellables have been both entertaining and educating homeowners to explore using Home Staging to sell their homes much faster and usually for more money than the competition. (more…)
The number one request that I get from all of my clients, whether they are from my Home Staging Training Company, Marketing and Networking Business, one of my Speaking Clients, all of them, are always looking for a way to be more creative, or at least add more creativity to their marketing efforts and effectively combine it with business. For some reason, we have been conditioned that the two don’t go together… but they MUST!
Over the years, people have constantly told me how “Creative or Imaginative” I am. Funny, I never thought of myself as such, but I am a self-professed dreamer, and I love letting my imagination run wild…which can be good, and of course, bad as well! (more…)
Staging your home, so that its’ appeal to potential buyers is increased, is largely a matter of removing your own influence from the property, making it appear more spacious and ensuring that everything is in good condition. All parts of the home, inside and out, should be considered. The intention is to help buyers imagine themselves living in the house.
A great deal of this can be accomplished just by tidying up the clutter and mess that seems to accumulate in every home. As you will be moving anyway, you can get a head start on the packing by putting everything you won’t need immediately away into boxes. These can be stored in an attic or garage, at a friend’s house, or in a rented storage facility. This will take away the personal touches that make it feel like home to you, but which can be distracting for buyers, particularly if they do not share your tastes. It will also make the house look bigger, particularly if you clear out and tidy your closets and other storage areas, to make them appear more spacious. Keep surfaces as empty as possible, for example by putting any appliances in the kitchen away into the cupboards. An emptier room will look bigger. (more…)
Home staging is often common sense, like repairing broken fittings, but also experience has shown that there are certain common ideas that can be applied to any house, and certain things that make a big difference in return for only a limited effort and expenditure.
These are some of the tips that feature regularly in newspaper and TV advice, and which either add to the perceived value of your property, or improve its saleability by appealing to more people. (more…)
The tough economy calls for a new arsenal of techniques to help real estate agents continue to sell homes in a depressed market.
Luckily, sellers are taking the reigns and painting, decorating and accessorizing their homes with the help of popular TV shows.
Of course, the hardest part of home staging can be figuring out where to start.
Begin by setting a budget, or if you don’t have one then focus instead on which rooms that need to be neatened and de-cluttered first and dig right in.
If you have a small budget to work with, prioritize your projects in terms of what needs to be replaced, updated or what just needs to be cleaned. (more…)
If you find yourself with a home that’s currently on the market, or you’re just about to take the plunge and face the property market head on, then it’s quite possible that you’ve at least considered have a good clean out and cutting down on some of your ’stuff’. But, even if you aren’t selling up, a good cleanout is hugely therapeutic and well worth any effort put into doing it.
Oh, you won’t hear any argument from me; tips on decluttering your home are a dime a dozen. A quick search of any of the major search engines will bring up thousands of results. Usually the information is fairly standard. Cleaning, deciding where to start, what to keep, what to throw out, give away, what to put it in and then, where to put. I’m sure you know what I mean. (more…)
Most homeowners and realtors are already well aware of the power of both a well staged home as well as online listings with pictures to grab the interest of potential buyers. In our current economic climate it has never been more crucial to showcase the positive aspects of any property for sale. With this being said, however, there are a plethora of atrocious listings out there in cyberspace that cannot possibly be convincing anyone to take them seriously.
The entire point of having your home listed online is to showcase your home to a larger audience. The “larger audience” aspect is pretty straight-forward; once your listing is online the entire internet can access the basic information about your property and look at all the pictures. It is estimated that currently almost 80% of home buyers look at properties on the internet before they decide which homes to tour in person which means that the impression your home can give online is vitally important. (more…)
If you plan to sell your house, you have probably heard of home staging. The main goal of this process is to make it attractive to potential buyers and give them more reasons to purchase your property. There are several things involved in this process. In order to make it successful, one has to learn how to establish a comfortable room, make it look bigger and cozier through arranging and decorating the house.
Many think that this is just mere preparation of the property for sale. However, there is more involved in this than just repairs, renovations, removing the clutter and cleaning. This is about details and final touches. The necessary step before one markets his property. This is like the make-up, shoes, and the choice off dress of a young woman going to a prom. (more…)
Your real estate agent has suggested that you hire a home stager, but you’re not sure. Or you’ve heard about home staging, and you wonder what it entails. What is home staging, and why should you stage your home?
Home Staging is the process of rearranging your furnishings in order to make your house the preferred home among buyers. It generally includes packing away unneccessary furniture and home decor, especially objects that reflect your personality. (more…)
If home truly is where the heart lives, it’s easy to understand why clients sometimes take the selling and inspection processes of their houses so personally. Home owners see with their hearts and the pasts that exist within the walls rather than clearing, cleaning, and making way for a new family to create their own memories. Likewise, buyers have a hard time imagining their own lives carrying on amidst the clutter and color of a lived-in house. Here are the classic home owner phrases that will have realtors calling you in for help.
1) Who doesn’t want a living room that fits three sectional couches, an air hockey table, a treadmill, and a desk unit that clings to the entire wall?
2) The fireplace doesn’t work anyway, let’s just shove that old, tumble-down china cabinet in front of it.
3) If they can’t appreciate 3,027 pieces of Star Wars memorabilia playing out epic battle sequences in all the glass built-ins then they don’t deserve to live here. (more…)
