“The first step in maximizing the sale of your home is to properly prepare it to show at its best. These 24 Expert Home Staging Tips can help you in a big way in either a hot or a cold real estate market, increasing your chances of selling, the speed in which it sells, and the price you get.”

1.) MAKE ALL NEEDED REPAIRS

Any small deficiency can take away from the appeal of your home to the potential buyer. A leaky bathroom faucet, a broken door bell, or peeling paint in the bathroom may seem minor to you, but these items could be a sign of overall owner neglect to the home buyer. That is why these minor problems should be either repaired, covered over, or replaced. All these signs of owner neglect must be eliminated. These items may be easily overlooked, so make sure you inspect your home thoroughly so that you can find and repair them. The best thing about these minor repairs is that they are relatively inexpensive and most you can do yourself in a short period of time. (more…)

If you’re trying to make your house appeal to buyers, one of the best ways that you can do that is by reducing the clutter and making it look like your home is organized and has ample storage. One of the ways that you can do this is by using inexpensive built in closet organizers to neatly store your items away on.

Closets, in their general configuration, are very poor for storing things in because they have usually one shelf over one clothing rail; this usually results in clothing of different lengths all hung together, many items stored on the floor of the closet, and piles of things stored on the one shelf that are often forgotten about. A closet such as this is unappealing and almost always looks messy and unorganized. (more…)

There are a number of tasks involved when you decide to sell your home. The first of these is the need to aggressively promote your home via several methods and media. This is so you can guarantee maximum exposure of your property, thus more buyers will be enticed. But you have to use home staging techniques to make your home more appealing whether on pictures or when buyers decide to pay a visit. Such step puts particular prominence to presenting your home in a very visually stimulating way.

There are many simple strategies in staging your home. Then again, it is equally important that you distinguish home staging from preparing your home for sale. The pre-sale preparations usually involve the functional repairs needed from maintenance to major renovations. Home staging mainly concentrates on the aesthetics of your home. This includes organization, design and overall visual impact. And most of the things you need to accomplish do not cost a dime. (more…)

Home staging is the art of prepping up a home for sale. In the real estate arena, home staging is an important step towards creating a good value for a home and getting it off the market faster than the others. The aim of home staging is to make a home or property appealing to a bigger number of potential buyers, improving its chances of being sold faster at a high rate.

Home staging is different from home improvement in a sense that in the former, there is no other next step than selling the house. Home improvements are done, meanwhile, not just with the intent of increasing the home’s value as part of a future marketing plan but to increase the efficiency and comfort of the house for its current owners as well. (more…)

Curb appeal is the attractiveness of your home as seen from the curb. Curb appeal is always desirable and is especially critical when selling your home. Even if your home is absolutely beautiful on the inside, potential buyers may drive right by without stopping if your curb appeal is lacking. Therefore, when you are preparing your home for sale, be sure to remember to stage the exterior as well as the interior.

The following 10 tips will be sure to boost your home’s curb appeal:

1. Trim back overgrown shrubbery (this also allows more natural light into your home, which is always a plus)

2. Mow the lawn and add sod to replace any brown patches

3. Weed and mulch gardens to give a well-manicured look

4. Plant seasonal flowers to add color (in winter use ornamental cabbage)

5. Update outdoor light fixtures and be sure light bulbs are in working order

6. Replace the mailbox, if needed, to coordinated with paint colors

7. Repaint the front door; use a color that accents your exterior color palette (keep your overall color palette neutral)

8. Repaint the front porch if it appears worn

9. Fill any cracks in the sidewalk with filler (available at most home improvement stores)

10. Be sure your house numbers are prominently displayed. If they appear too small from the street, replace them with larger numbers.

Remember, you never get a second chance to make a great first impression!

For a copy of The Tranquility Bay Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Home Staging visit: http://tranquilitybaywellness.com/tranquility-bay-real-estate-staging.

Terri Marshall is a Certified Home Staging Consultant, Green Living Consultant, Certified Stress Management Specialist and Certified Wellness Coach and owner of Tranquility Bay Home Therapy in Annapolis, MD. Please visit her website http://tranquilitybaywellness.com (Books Tab) for a copy of The Tranquility Bay Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Home Staging and The Tranquility Bay Green Living Guide.

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…)