Setting The Home-Selling Stage
Setting The Home-Selling Stage. One of the biggest goals for most people in life is to buy their own home. It’s nice to move out of the parent’s house and into a home that has your name on it, but it’s even nicer if you have saved the deposit that you need to be able to buy that house instead of renting it. There’s nothing wrong with renting your first place when you spread those wings, don’t get me wrong. The thing is, renting is paying for someone else’s mortgage when you could just be paying for your own. Hunting for the right house is stressful and yet exciting; viewing house after house and knowing that you will be choosing one to own for yourself is a big deal. Once you find the right home for you, you may be thinking about whether you include enough rooms for a future family, a garden, and even how many bathrooms you would like the home to have. It’s a big deal and signing on that dotted line could be the beginning for you. The beginning of a life of independence and striking out on your own.
After a few years, you may decide it’s time to sell. Perhaps the family has grown beyond you thought it would (hello, unexpected twins), perhaps you need to move to a new area because work has relocated to a new area, and you are going to relocate with them. Truth be told, it doesn’t really matter what the reason is for you need to sell up. You’ve got a bunch of memories about your house that you will be able to carry with you wherever you go and that’s just priceless, really. If you thought that buying a new house was a stressful and meaty task, selling your home is going to be the biggest thing that you could do. It won’t be because you are putting it on the market, hosting people to come and have a look around, and even the feeling that you will have when you finally let the house go. It’s all about the staging. The hardest thing about selling a house is staging it so that it’s ready for someone else to come and have a look at. You would already have had your home valued by how it currently looks, and that figure may have been less than ideal for you. So, the next step to that is staging it so that you can up the value and make it look good. You’ll likely have gone through several websites with home loan calculators, searching for how much you could be loaned by the bank, so you know what to search for when you look for a new house again. Ideally, you need your house to sell for as much as possible so that you have more cash to play with when you move; especially if moving inner city or to a bigger house.
Preparing your home for a sale can be a difficult thing to do. Firstly, you’ve spent several years and a lot of cash ensuring that your house is exactly how you would want it to be. The idea that you need to make upgrades to a house you already find perfect seems ridiculous. It’s so much more than just making your house ready for guests and it’s so much more than sprucing up the house in your annual spring clean. Your staging efforts are going to determine whether your house sells to someone else, and you really need it to sell if you hope to afford that beautiful city house you’ve been looking at. The people that will be setting foot in your home won’t be following the ‘no shoes’ rule that your friends and family follow: these are strangers that will quite literally be judging you on your house and judging whether your house is to their taste. It’s a tough pill to swallow, and yet here you are, ready to set the stage for your house to be market-worthy. Staging your house is going to be all about making it perfect for sale, not perfect for you, and this is going to take some changes. Sometimes, it won’t just be about shampooing the carpets and color-matching the paint to cover up scuffs. Sometimes, it’s going to be about paying a gardener to come and sort out your lawn and relay the broken tiles on the patio. Below, I’ve put together some of the best staging tips that can mean the difference between people telling you that they’ll let you know, and them offering to sign on the dotted line.
Be As Impartial As Possible.
This is going to be the hardest part about selling your home. It’s YOUR home. Being impartial about the mosaic tiles in the bathroom that you painstakingly laid yourself on is not going to be easy. You have to take a deep breath, pull up your big girl pants, and look at your home from an objective perspective. You need to be able to see where improvements could be made. For example, you may absolutely adore your fresh, lemon-yellow kitchen with the daffodil blinds to match, but someone else may see that as garnish and far too bright. A lick of paint to a more neutral color, along with a switch from patterned blinds to plain can make a huge difference. Once you can see what may put off other people about your style, you can make changes to suit that.
Know Your Audience
You won’t personally know the people that set food through your door, of course, you won’t. However, you can anticipate the type of buyer that you are aiming your house toward. If you are currently living in a twee little one-bedroom apartment, you can bet that working professionals without a family will be looking to buy your property. This can help you when it comes to interior styling and give you a chance to give it a sleek and modern style versus the cozy, lived-in look you’ve been going for. If you have a house with a couple of bedrooms, perhaps a family would be looking for a house for the kids to run around. This can be jazzed up with vases of fresh flowers and shiny apples in fruit bowls. It’s all about selling it to the right market.
Take You Out
Everything that makes you who you are needs to be hidden. Personal photographs clutter of trinkets on the shelves and random scarves hanging on door knobs need to be away. Decluttering is the biggest key to home staging because you are trying to show the buyers the space that is available in the room. You need to have clean, clear surfaces, empty flooring as much as possible and a tidy home so that they can place themselves inside in their mind. It’s very clever, and it’s going to be how you sell your house.
Neutralize It
Your house is your place to stamp your personality and there’s every chance that your personality includes burnt orange cushions on black leather sofas. There’s also every chance that you painted a lovely feature wall burnt orange. Hey, I can’t blame you, colors are life. However, when you’re selling a home, you want to make it a blank canvas. Go over feature walls with neutral beige and cream colors; yes, it’s boring, but boring sells to someone who wants to see that blank canvas. You could have the most beautiful lounge with the perfect size, but if they are put off by the color then it’s a bye-bye sale!
Floor It
Your carpets may have been there since you moved in, so they may have that lovely look of being through the wars. No amount of hoovering and shampooing is going to fix that, so it could be worth your cash to replace them. I get that it’s an initial expense you may not have thought about, but it’s going to be so worth it when you can add value to the house that you’re about to sell. Bring in a buffer and polish the floors that don’t carpet; you need it to sparkle and look as new as possible. It’s a shiny new toy that you’re holding up to people, so don’t forget that it should look like it’s move-in ready.
Accessorise!
Lastly, the biggest way that you can make your home as inviting and sellable as possible is to accessorize it. Add beautiful bowl vases of fresh flowers into every room. Make sure that the lighting is as natural as possible and where it can’t be, make it light and bright so that buyers can see every corner of the room. Add some artwork to the walls and if it’s going to help, iron the cushion covers! Accessories will add that touch of brilliance to your house.
Buying a home isn’t easy but selling one that you have spent time in is harder. Get it right the first time and you’ll be chasing that upgrade to the bank.