Staging Your Home and Selling Your Home

Staging Your Home to Sell!

With the popularity of new furnishing and accessory stores, consumers became adept at decorating their homes to emulate the glossy home magazines. This puts the onus on home sellers to create the cleanest, most attractive space possible to appeal to the most buyers that you can in a tough economy.

That's why it is important to place yourself in a buyer's head. You may even have a friend help you with this. Walk through your home and consider eliminating ANYTHING THAT IS NOT NECESSARY to make your rooms look great and livable. Let me clarify this idea... your toothbrush in a cup on the counter is NOT NECESSARY to show your buyer the countertop and space. Ten photographs on a shelf do not add to the decorating; though they might give you joy. Remember we are trying to impress someone else. Personal touches that reveal your taste and hobbies and family do not attract buyers, rather they remind buyers that it is YOUR house. We want the buyers to picture themselves and their own furnishings in the home.

Even if the buyer is not a neat housekeeper, most cannot imagine living in someone else's mess. Buyers, when faced with a plethora of available real estate, will often choose a home that has been decluttered and smells fresh and clean. Ask that same friend of yours to be honest with you about any smells they can detect, any dirt that needs to be cleaned, or anything that turns them off. Windows need to sparkle, all surfaces should be clear except for just a plant or one decorative item, and your refrigerator needs to be clear of any magnets. Think "shiny and clean surfaces" in every room.

Begin to pack up bookcases and closets - again offering clean surfaces and space. Clearly mark the boxes and store away - knowing you are making progress towards your move. Consider removing bookcases once you have emptied them - most do not add to the beauty of your rooms.

• Pack up anything you don't need for six months, both furnishings and objects on surfaces as well as things in your closets.
• Remove personal photos on walls. Have only one piece of artwork or a mirror on a wall.
• Remove small area rugs and make your space appear larger
• Clean, clean, clean - carpets and all surfaces in your home.
• Consider removing furniture. Try taking pieces from a room and see if it improves the appearance and space.

The exterior of your home is also of major importance. Buyers turned off by your exterior will not even come inside your home to see the rest of your house.

• Does your door need a new paint job? Consider a nice rich complementing color.
• Is your lawn neatly mowed and edged?
• Is the pathway or sidewalk to your home clean? Does it need pressure-washing?
• Does your entry light fixture look nice and not outdated? Consider replacing it.
• Is your mailbox neat and attractive?
• Are your windows clean and sparkling? I remove my screens because I love the additional sunlight. Be sure to pack them away safely so you can assure a home buyer that you have screens for your windows.

If you can spend some time taking care of these details, and even some money to paint and make some small changes, you will find your home sells more quickly and for more money.

Selling your home in a market with tons of competition can be done with some strategy.

Adding Curb Appeal To Your Home To Sell Your House Fast

If you wish to sell your home and you are searching for ways to help you sell your house fast, getting your home to be in an excellent condition by improving its curb appeal is the best way to go. Staging your home can be a great solution to help you make reselling fast and possibly earn more money. Preparing or beautifying your house before you put it up for sale in the housing market will help rid off loads of housing troubles.

When you say curb appeal, it simple means the exterior magnetism of a real estate property wherein everything is in perfect condition from the roof to the lawn and to the garden.

Why do homes with curb appeal sell fast?

According to the National Association of Realtors, 49% of residential properties that have been sold are mainly because of its curb appeal. Every potential home owner is on the lookout for a house that has a reasonable market value, good neighborhood, accessible commercial places and most especially a house that is simply relaxing to the eye. You may have noticed that most individuals in search for a home always end up purchasing a house that looks flawlessly perfect and pretty. After all, what most buyers look at first is the exterior of the house. No one would prefer buying a chipped stained house, wouldn't they? They want a place that they can stay for good and one that can stay solid for the years to come.

Admit it, these days most people who go to open houses choose a house that has caught their eye when they were still driving by or pulling up the driveway. Even more, home buyers tend to pay more for a house that has that charm.

Improving Your Home's Curb Appeal

First impressions always last and getting an excellent liking is incredibly important since this will mainly determine if the buyer will purchase you house or forget about it and move on to the next house. As a home seller, it is your responsibility to tend to every detail of your house so do not waste all your time tidying up the inside of your house. The outside matters too.

Another common mistake most sellers make is an assumption that potential home buyers have the same intuition as them. Remember, what may be pleasant to you when you stayed in the house can be distasteful to the buyer. So it is best to view the house as a commodity that you desire to sell for the highest dollar possible.

The following are some curb appeal tips gathered from successful home owners who sold their houses fast.

·Do the curb appeal exercise. It is not your opinion that only matters, this time it is the potential home buyers take on your home. Take a good look of your home from a distance in order to get a good view of your house and its surroundings. Ask yourself these three important questions: what is my first impression of the house and its exterior? What are the best exterior features of the house and are there any more ways to enhance them? What are least appealing exterior facets of the house and how can I improve them?

·Take photos. Bring out your digital camera in order to get clear views of possible exterior house defects. In this way, you get to organize the tasks you have to do. This also eliminates confusion and it makes the job easier.

·De-clutter your yard. Nothing scares home buyers than a messy yard. Pick up the trash and other objects that hinder your yard's beauty. Wipe, sweep and throw unnecessary things. Tend your garden, water the plants, and trim the bushes, plants and flowers. Take off pointless decorations.

·Clean the pavement. No one wants to step on a pathway that is full of dirt. The best way to make buyers buy your house is by having an inviting and happy aura. This must start from your pathway all the way to the inside of your home.

·Re-paint. Nothing spells ugly more than a chipped fence or wall. Home buyers always like seeing a house that is fully painted. Also, you might want to change the exterior paint of the house especially when its color is too drab.

·Repair. Fix broken windows, fence panels, your mailbox and the like. You can do this yourself or hire a handyman in the village.

Have Plans to Design Your House - Do Your Due Diligence

Everybody seeks shelter and everybody wants a perfect house for its perfect family. Today, more and more people seem to be spending money on designing their houses or hiring designers to do the same to own a beautiful house.

You might not have any clue about interiors designing. But you can always hire a designer, tell him or her what exactly you looking for and how you want your house to look like. Even if you have no knowledge about interior designing, you will have to play an active role in getting your house renovated or designed. After all it is your house! You know what you are looking for. You know what things to add and what things to subtract. You know every corner of the house. The home design team will just do their work, but in between, will keep asking you for your suggestions and comments. At that time you should know what you want and how you want it to be done. Just giving a contract to any team will not help. You will have to keep your eyes opened and be equally active as the workers, to shape the look of your house.

Take a tour

It is not that you sit at home all the time. You also go out. While you are out, observe and imagine things that you can always implement on your home designs. When you visit your friends or neighbors houses, look around. See, how they have got their houses shaped with perfection. You can also visit open houses by real estate agents. This can help you in big measures to learn more about home design projects.

Many people spend a lot of time driving around in cities and countryside. You can learn and explore from those drives also. All you have to do is keep your imagination-self active throughout. Any sight or visual can attract you and you can very well start implementing in your home designs.

Stores & Magazines

You might find going through magazines, dedicated towards interior designing, for examples and new ideas, an absolute nonsense. But you forgetting that these magazines sole purpose of publication is to help people like us know more about interior designing. It is wise to allocate some time from our busy schedule to sit and chat with a well known designer or scoop out some time to check out gardens and houses, interiors of our country.

It is important to take interest in your home designing because it is your hard earned money that you will spend on decorating or designing your house. You can also visit a local home improvement store to check out new components that have been launched in the market, how to use and implement those in your home designs.

Many big companies promise to give you your dream home. But how can they know what your dream home should look like? It is your house. You have to plan out how your dream home should look like. After all, your dream home your heaven. So why not spend some time to learn a little about kitchen decorating ideas?

How to Beat the Bursting Housing Bubble

Many say that the housing bubble has burst and it's very difficult for people to sell their homes. Housing sales have decreased dramatically the past few months, and housing prices are falling all across the country. Many homeowners are still holding on to unrealistic expectations and many would-be buyers are making ludicrous lowball offers, so the market is basically at a stalemate. As inventories jump, prices will have to plummet. Many don't expect it to get better until at least 2008.

Last year and part of this year, home prices skyrocketed to ridiculous levels. And now, no one wants to be the last person to have paid way too much to buy a house.

If you own your house and waited too long to sell, I've got a few tips to help get your home off your back:

1 - Start with your Real Estate Agent - Make sure your current agent has a ton of experience. Used to be you could hire any agent, with only 2 months on the job, and the house would sell before her or she pounded the "For Sale" sign into the ground. No more. Get someone with experience, name recognition in the community, and superior sales skills.

2 - A Proactive Agent - Get an agent that will truly "pound the pavement" for your listing. You need a proactive agent that will be out there, moving and grooving on your property. Many of the newbie agents that got into the biz over the last two years will be in "career change" mode in the next few months. The real agents who know how to work will be the ones who survive this cycle. Find one who will work for you!

3 - Know an Agent's Quality - A great agent will guarantee his or her service in writing. A bad one would run for the hills from a guarantee. A great agent will not make you sign a long term listing agreement. A bad agent will freak out if you won't sign a fat contract. If it's not working out, you need to be able to cut the cord.

4 - All the World's a Stage! - Hire a "stager" to go through your house and make your house sellable. Many people wrongly think staging is too expensive. Not true. It's about being creative, not spending money. It's actually possible to sell your home "as is" (and not stage) and lose money.

5 - Realistic Pricing Plans - You're not going to get the big profit you thought you would. Plan accordingly for a much more stingy market. Let your agent do the research on the right price for your home, in your neighborhood. I would recommend not leaving your house on the market too long (and expect some really low lowball offers.) If you've already moved and cannot sell, consider renting the house out at a reasonable rate to help provide some relief.

6 - Self Staging - You're a Do-It-Yourselfer, huh? Okay. Know this - any wild and crazy decorations, furniture, fixtures, colors, and designs in your house will turn off the average John Q. Public homebuyer. You might have the most clever and eclectic taste on the planet. Your artsy friends think your house is "to die for!" But dark, rich colors on the walls and ultra-modern furniture can turn off today's picky buyer.

SELF-STAGING TIPS:
- To save money, make sure you have Curb Appeal: manicure the front lawn, add some colorful flowers, paint the shutters, trim bushes, paint the front door a nice neutral color, brush falling leaves off the roof, etc. Lay down sod if the summer beat up your grass. Add a new doormat.

- Is any room in your house red? Blue? Bright green? School bus yellow? Paint it. Creams, whites, pale yellows, coffees, and light earthy greens. With white trim around the doors. Use an eggshell paint to keep off fingerprints and make it easy to clean before an Open House.

- Declutter. Remove those piles of books, magazines, and newspapers. Less is always more. Remove anything and everything knick-knacky. Take out all your family photos. They want to picture themselves living there. Again, less is more. Makes the house look and feel bigger.

- Check under your 70's orange shag rug and pray someone put hardwood floors there. Pull it up, rent a buffer (or hire someone to simply re-finish the floor), and you've got an inexpensive way to add home value.

- Turn cluttered kid's rooms into a guest bedroom. Not everyone has or likes kids. It could turn them off to see a pink bedroom with ponies and stuffed animals.

- Steam clean the carpets. Remove pets to the Mother-in-Law's house (you might be used to the odors, but...) if you have them. Use new fresh towels, candles, and flowers during an Open House.

- Replace blinds. Keep curtains open during showings - natural light sells.

- Make sure the house has "feature cards" in every major room (sell features, such as 'air conditioning', 'new water heater', 'finished basement') for showings.

- Get rid of dirty clothes, trash in waste baskets, mail on counters, make it look like no one lives there. Or a photo layout in "Metropolitan Homes.

Good luck in selling your house!

Investment in Home Staging

Making an investment in home staging is always a smart choice for home sellers and rental agents, as well. Staging is a proven science that adds tremendous value to a property and can drive up the price paid for purchase or rent simply by optimizing the look, feel and flow of the home's interior and exterior elements. Statistics have clearly shown that investing in property staging is one of the best ways to derive additional profit from a sale or rental.

Home staging is not like interior decorating, landscaping or other design arts. These endeavors seek to improve the aesthetics of the home based on occupant preferences. Home staging falls into the category of real estate marketing strategies and is designed exclusively to satisfy the wish lists of potential buyers. By improving the way a home looks and feels to the buyer pool, the property is distinguished from the competition, bettering the chances for a lucrative offer on the house or apartment. To put it simply... Make the property suit the needs and expectations of prospective buyers and you are far more likely to sell it for more money, rather than try to force your buyers to acclimate to the home's deficiencies.

Home staging is usually performed by a professional stager who works closely with the seller, and their real estate agent, molding the property to suit the latest trends in the area. Although staging can be a daunting task for do-it-yourselfers, professional stagers make it look easy! These highly trained marketing pros will use a wide range of techniques and strategies to bring out the best facets of any property and use equally effective methods of hiding less desirable attributes. When the job is complete, many sellers do not even recognize their own homes and some even reconsider selling once they see the property's true potential!

One of the lesser known benefits of home staging is the fact that staging costs are tax deductible, since they fall under the category of real estate advertising expenses. That's right. The full cost of professional staging can be deducted from taxes. This makes the investment in home staging a very safe and satisfying one. After all, the benefits come at no cost whatsoever, once the fees are written off!

As a home staging consultant, I guide clients through the process from start to finish. I try to educate home owners and management companies about the many advantages of staging properties prior to listing them for sale or rental. I love my job, since I know I am providing a valuable service for my clients and have really come to appreciate just how much I can help them to accomplish their property sale or rental goals. I never feel like I have to sell myself or my services, since they speak volumes for themselves... All I do is present the objective facts and the rest is common sense for any intelligent seller or landlord.

To summarize this article, I urge any and all real estate sellers or rental agents to research home staging as a means of increasing your success rate in sales or rentals, but also as the best method of increasing their profit margin from the transaction. It is not difficult to convince people to make more money! Just show them the way to do it and allow logic to take its course... If I can help you to get more money from the sale or rental of your property assets, please feel free to contact me at any time. I am here to help!

Home Staging is More Than Just a Pretty Face

Gone are the days when homeowners were able to rely heavily on the expertise of their real estate agent to sell their homes. It is essential for homeowners to be more involved than ever and applying the typical "home staging" strategies are just not enough. Preparing a house for sale once meant decluttering, painting walls neutral, and burning a candle or baking cookies prior to a showing, but home staging has evolved into a marketing tool, effectively making it essential as hiring the right real estate agent.

What's made the biggest difference between selling a home today verses only 20 years ago, is that properties are not just homes anymore they are products to be sold in the open market. A traditional investment has become an opportunity to make more money, essentially changing the way properties have to be marketed.

Home Staging applies various strategies to increase the value of the property and its chance of selling faster than any other in the marketplace. It has become a marketing tool.  Three very important strategies are: applying what the marketplace is demanding, such as décor trends and home improvement updates; discovering the property's identity to apply target marketing strategies and applying proven effective furniture arrangement and interior decorating approaches to ensure potential home buyer's feel at home, allowing them to imagine their own belongings in the space.

Ideally, you will need to give yourself at least six months to implement these strategies and your product (property) will be ready to meet today's market expectations and to be marketed by a real estate professional.