When it comes to preparing your home for the selling process, staging is key to attracting a diverse selection of prospective buyers.
Investopedia reports that home staging has become a must for sellers. 82% of real estate agents claim that staging makes it easier for prospective buyers to visualize the property as their future home, while industry analysts report that staged homes sell faster and for more money than those that are not staged.
Staging, according to Gordon Roberts, a broker with Sotheby’s International Realty, is “a form of visual merchandising that draws on some of the fundamentals of interior design.” It is about drawing attention to the visual beauty and unique features of your home without being too obvious about it.
The key to staging is knowing what features to highlight and what matches your home’s overall design. While it is sometimes easy to get carried away with incorporating beautiful furniture or a paint job you love, staging is an art form. Ultimately, it is about understanding your space and striking a delicate balance between its features to create a sense of visual beauty and harmony.
Here are some tips for successfully staging your home for market:
While some properties benefit greatly from bold colours and furniture, too much personality can sometimes be a turnoff. Remember—what you like, others might not, so it is important to know when to reign it in. But this does not mean that you must eschew personality altogether, lest you make your home feel sterile and uninviting.
Neutral does not mean that you are locked into a dreary palette of solid black, white, and grey. According to The Spruce, a neutral canvas can feel calming and fresh while giving you the freedom to experiment with textiles and accessories in bolder, more vivid colours. When selling a home, they also let buyers imagine the potential of a room (and picture themselves inhabiting it!)
For more tips on crafting the perfect neutral space, visit their blog here!
Kiki Interiors emphasizes that furniture, plants, and other décor pieces should be in proportion with the room. They should be complimentary rather than suffocating. After all—you are selling the house, not the items in it!
Slightly empty rooms are always better than overcrowded rooms. If your rooms are leaning towards the latter end of the spectrum, they suggest storing larger pieces in a temporary storage locker, or with friends or family!
Remove outdated features
When listing a home for sale, it is important to put yourself in the buyer’s position. While you may love certain features of your home, to others, they may appear outdated. This can turn off prospective buyers, slowing down the sale of your home and/or negativity impacting the sale price.
Before listing, ProfessionalStaging.com suggests checking your home for outdated features that may hinder the sale of your home—popcorn ceilings, dated light fixtures and flooring, wallpaper, and hardware. Certain colours can also impact the sale of your home. Check out this informative article from Forbes for more information.
While decluttering and reducing furniture is often necessary to make your space feel less crowded and more hospitable, Inman states it is important not to remove so much that the home feels empty or cold. The key, they state, is maximizing a sense of space while creating living rooms and master bedrooms that are inviting and warm.
Inman also states that a carefully curated selection of art adorning your walls will draw the buyer’s eye without making your home seem like a museum of junk shop. Too much art, they claim, can pull focus away from your home’s features, resulting in lower offers.
Plants breathe life into a home. Adding flowers and strategically placed houseplants can do wonders to catch the eye of prospective buyers.
According to Apartment Therapy, plants not only make homes feel more lively and inviting, making a great first impression, but also gives buyers a sense of scale when scrolling through online listings, creates visual depth and texture, and adds authenticity by preventing that sterile “fake staged look.”
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At McGarr Realty, we are staging experts! We know what it takes to move a home and are delighted to offer guidance on all matters related to staging!
Ready to get moving? Get in touch today! You can reach us at our St. Catharines office at 905-687-9229, or at our Niagara-on-the-Lake office at 905-468-9229. Or send us a message on our contact page, HERE.
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