Please insert all house staging/selling tips here!

[mom2tbcnm]

We are going to be selling our house by owner next month. I need all the advice I can get. We have to be out of the house by July.

What does the Hive Mind have to say?

Thanks,

Katty

[BikeBookBread]

:lurk5: - we're staging our home in the next few months for rental...

[newbie]

Declutter!!!! Get rid of all personal items. No knick knacks.

[Rosy]

Stock up on refrigerated cookie dough. Pop half a batch in before someone comes to show the house.

Get as much stuff out of the house as humanly possible. Get a storage unit if you have to.

Take down family pictures and any other personal items.

Turn up the heat before someone comes over, and turn on the lights and/or lamps.

Have your agent call the agent that shows the house ASAP after the showing to get feedback and to get a sense of the buyer's interest.

Make sure your house is priced competitively for your area, and be willing to drop it.

Make sure your agent is basing his/her comp on houses that SELL, not houses that have been languishing on the market.

Try not to be home when people come to look.

 

That's all I can think of for now. Can you tell I've been through this recently?? :)

[hornblower]

Get a storage locker & remove roughly 1/2 of the furniture, the vast majority of knick-knacks, clothes & toys.

 

Clear off all horizontal surfaces, including the counters in the bathrooms & kitchen.

 

Declutter cupboards in the kitchen & bath - people will look inside & if it's cluttered, will get the impression that there's not enough space. Clean out closets so again they're not too full.

 

This is the same reason you clean off the counters & take out some furniture - so it all looks spacious and uncluttered.

 

Look at pics of new townhome developments & see how they stage things; for e.g. http://liveatm1.com/interiors.html

 

Clean everything; clean windows esp make a ton of difference. Make sure the front yard is well maintained as that's the first thing people will see. Consider putting in seasonal plants in a pot by the door.

 

Last thing is aromatherapy. Try using some neutralish, non heavy scent. For our showings, I used to put pure lavender oil in a diffuser for the 1/2 hour before a showing. I think that or something citrusy is nice. I also vacuumed all the rooms & forbade anyone to walk on the carpet (it was a plush carpet which showed footprints LOL)

[Rosy]

Oh, and paint the walls if you can. White or neutral.

[susancollins]

Hi,

Before I had my third child I was a Broker with Re/Max. Less is more. I would recommend packing up anything you don't really need. I would store any books, clothes, large furniture anything that you didn't really need in storage. This will make your house seem bigger. You could put a nice tablecloth on your dinning room table and set the table with china. Some fresh paint, and plants in the house will do wonders. When I held an open house I played soft music and and lit apple scented candles in the kitchen for a nice homemade smell. :001_smile:

[lllll]

Same as others, plus remove all animals and animal things like litter boxes, etc. Some people really hate cats or dogs or whatever. Along with the dogs, I also took any kids who weren't working on the house (OUTside) with dh, and went for a drive ... well, we went down the road to a cemetary ... until the realtor was gone. (Cats were tossed outside and disappeared until the people were gone.)

 

If you have a bread machine, almost any kind of bread can be baking. And there's no mess.

 

We painted the inside and the outside of our house. Used one of the cheapest paints we could find - some kind of paint they use to do apartment interiors for the inside. It all looked great. And we only put one coat on.

 

Turned on every light in the house - even though it was daylight outside. Opened every shade, too. If it had been nice weather, I'd have opened windows, probably.

 

But what I think really sold the house was the fact that it was clean and decuttered and freshly painted, inside and outside.:)

Edited February 3, 2010 by ksva

[MariannNOVA]

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

 

Definitely get a storage unit if you have to.......get as much out of the house as you can. Clean the closets -- closets that are not jammed full of stuff will look larger.

 

As odd as it sounds, folks who look at your house do not want to know anything about the folks who currently live there - get rid of anything that 'personalizes' your home.

 

try to watch a couple of episodes of the 'staging' or 'sell this house' shows on HGTV -- it is the same information over and over again so you only need to watch one or two shows, but it will give you a good visual of what you are trying to achieve.

 

Freshly painted rooms are always a plus - neutral colors -- linen white or delicate lace. Have your windows professionally washed so that they sparkle - makes for good curb appeal, and don't forget the exterior and the landscaping. Most folks have decided before they ever walk through the door if your house is the one for them -- you want to get them at the curb!

[HerdingCats]

Stock up on refrigerated cookie dough. Pop half a batch in before someone comes to show the house.

Get as much stuff out of the house as humanly possible. Get a storage unit if you have to.

Take down family pictures and any other personal items.

Turn up the heat before someone comes over, and turn on the lights and/or lamps.

Have your agent call the agent that shows the house ASAP after the showing to get feedback and to get a sense of the buyer's interest.

Make sure your house is priced competitively for your area, and be willing to drop it.

Make sure your agent is basing his/her comp on houses that SELL, not houses that have been languishing on the market.

Try not to be home when people come to look.

:iagree:

Get a storage locker & remove roughly 1/2 of the furniture, the vast majority of knick-knacks, clothes & toys.

 

Clear off all horizontal surfaces, including the counters in the bathrooms & kitchen.

 

Declutter cupboards in the kitchen & bath - people will look inside & if it's cluttered, will get the impression that there's not enough space. Clean out closets so again they're not too full.

 

This is the same reason you clean off the counters & take out some furniture - so it all looks spacious and uncluttered.

 

Look at pics of new townhome developments & see how they stage things; for e.g. http://liveatm1.com/interiors.html

 

Clean everything; clean windows esp make a ton of difference. Make sure the front yard is well maintained as that's the first thing people will see. Consider putting in seasonal plants in a pot by the door.

 

Last thing is aromatherapy. Try using some neutralish, non heavy scent. For our showings, I used to put pure lavender oil in a diffuser for the 1/2 hour before a showing. I think that or something citrusy is nice. I also vacuumed all the rooms & forbade anyone to walk on the carpet (it was a plush carpet which showed footprints LOL)

__________________

I would second these suggestions.

We spent a couple months watching an HGTV show, "Sell This House" and here are some of the ideas we took away that paid off. Granted this was a few years ago before the economy headed south, but we sold it on the first showing at the top price per square foot for our neighborhood! We spent some time and money getting it ready, but I really wanted it to go fast once we put it up.

 

*Replace any old, out-dated fixtures that you can afford to. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but it gives the buyer the sense that things are new and updated. These kind of things are high-impact improvements that set your home apart and pay-off in sale price.

 

*Clean the bathrooms and bleach or replace grout/caulk that is discolored.

 

*Also, get plug-in air fresheners for throughout the home.

 

*Arrange and layer white towels (cheap Wal-Mart ones will do fine) hotel-style in the bathroom for the spa-look.

 

*Make everything as bright and neutral as possible. Repaint dark rooms if you have to.

 

*Study up on staging techniques, they really work! We used cheap white sheets to slipcover some couches that weren't too attractive. We also used sheets to drape over a simple rod as a window treatment in a room that needed it.

 

*Pillows, plants, and paint!!

 

*Soft music playing during showings.

 

*Make sure your realtor takes good quality, well-lit, professional pictures of your home.

 

This kind of stuff takes some work, but if you are willing to put the time and effort into it before you put the home on the market, it can make a big difference.

 

Good Luck!!

[3littlekeets]

Another HGTV addict here... Sabrina DeSoto's BIG thing is every bed must have a headboard to ground the room and make it look nice. If you don't have headboards, get creative -- she's used metal wall art, low pictures, etc... And, new, neutral bed linens in the master.

 

Oddly, the goal seems to make the home more like a hotel than a home ;-).

[Cammie]

 

Oddly, the goal seems to make the home more like a hotel than a home ;-).

 

 

:iagree: I think that is exactly the goal! THe point is the buyer is supposed to be able to imagine her furniture in the house, her kids photos on the wall, her pots and pans in the kitchen and her clothes in the closets. If you have too much of your stuff, she can't picture her stuff there.

 

One thing we did was get a California Closets type organizational system installed in the master bedroom closet (I think we got it through Costco.) It made a huge difference! People want to live in a house with a closet like that! We also had the backyard re-landscaped.

[lllll]

Coming at it from the other side, I can tell you what clouded my view of a house whenever I, persoally, was househunting.

 

Clutter - I couldn't see if walls were damaged; or water stains under sinks; or damaged floors. I didn't care about the person's personal stuff. I just wanted to see what I would be left with AFTER all their stuff was gone.

 

Owners AND realtors yakking; together, individually, whatever - Couldn't concentrate. Very annoying.

 

Electronic gadgets on - We once looked at a house where the owner was there and had his computer on as if we had interrupted something. (Two different houses, actually.) These guys weren't working from home, btw. It can be as distracting as having a TV blaring at me. Annoying.

 

Owners watching me as I TRIED to look at their house - Inhibiting. Felt I couldn't say what I was thinking unless it was complimentary of their house. Much less ask probing questions. And I have seen owners get very defensive when asked questions. Makes me think they're trying to hide something. (Which, btw, they actually WERE for 2 houses we looked at. :glare:)

 

Dirty house - Makes me think that if they didn't care enough to do basic housekeeping, then they probably didn't do a lot of important basic maintenance either. I'm not thinking of everyday type cleaning which those of us with a houseful of people are familiar with. The other kind.

 

Personal stuff - A slight distraction because I always stop to look at photos which people put out. The other stuff I'm used to. Doesn't bother me. But I definitely don't want to be sitting in this house somewhere down the road and 'seeing' the previous owners in it, too. Creepy.

 

Landscaping - Not my thing. When I see a truly landscaped yard, I see more work for me. The first thing I usually do is go in and rip out everything close to the house. I've lived in houses with termites and seen houses in fire ant country. Growth next to the base of the house grows both pests. Yuk. But that's probably my own personal quirk. I assume most people like landscaping??

 

Non-neutral colors on walls and carpet - You might love that red wall; but I'm thinking 'I wonder just how much off-white paint it would take to cover up something that ugly!?!'.

 

 

Anyway, those are a few of the things I could remember from our own househunting trips over the years.

 

HTH

Kathy

[Cinder]

Lots of great tips! The only thing I have to add that hasn't already been mentioned is to replace ALL your light bulbs. A realtor mentioned this to us when we sold our first house and we thought it was weird. But you don't realize how much dust your light bulbs collect until you've put the new ones in. It adds to the whole "clean windows, clean blinds, turn on all the lights" brightness of your home.

 

 

Cinder

[Mabeline]

We sold our house recently and our realator told us to take off all the screens and put them in the garage. It made a huge difference in the light it let in the windows. Remember to label them so you know which ones go where. HTH

[elegantlion]

Remember the goal is for the other people to picture themselves living in your home, not visiting someone elses home.

 

If you're closets are overstuffed they will think there won't be enough space for their stuff, even if they have less than you.

 

Astound their senses.

 

We sold our first house FSBO, here's some tips dh and I picked up:

 

1. When you show your house you will be having strangers in your home. I always made sure to show our home when dh was home for security reasons. If that wasn't possible I'd make sure here was at least another adult in the house.

 

2. I would let dh (he was in sales) show the house and I would kind of hang out in the background.

 

3. We kept a log of who toured our home.

 

4. Any personal information, bills, cash, etc was put somewhere they shouldn't be looking, ie: a dresser or desk drawer. We used to own a cleaning business and you'd be surprised what people leave out in plain view.

 

Good luck!

[charlotteb]

There's an excellent show on HGTV called "The Unsellables". We love it! We have had our house for sale for the past 5 months and no offers. We started watching this show a few months ago and then have taken about a month to re-do our house. Now our viewings are going thru the roof! I predict a sale in our very near future :)

[Aggie]

As for the scents, please don't use any artificial ones. Those little plug-ins and candles can give some people (and me) an instant headache.

 

The most memorable home we ever looked at had a roast in the oven. Oh, my. It just screamed "HOME".:001_smile:

 

We baked cinnamon bread as we were leaving and that was a delicious scent!

 

I kept a laundry basket by the door, then right before a showing I would throw all last minute stuff in there and load it in the van. Dirty clothes, stray books, even trash bags.

[3littlekeets]

Oh, and if you have ANY pets, make the "disappear" when you are showing the home...all traces should be poofed!

[kalanamak]

Declutter!!!! Get rid of all personal items. No knick knacks.

 

What about hints for an empty house? I just put down earnest money on a house 5 minutes from work (:)), set up for a family, not entertaining like this house (:):)), a bedroom to be a library/schoolroom (:001_smile::001_smile::001_smile:) and....a MUD ROOM. (Plus much smaller than this house.):hurray:

 

What should I leave in this house when I put it on the market? Rugs? A bed or two? I have no idea!

[hornblower]

Oh, and if you have ANY pets, make the "disappear" when you are showing the home...all traces should be poofed!

 

Meh - I'm neutral on that advice, but then I am a pet lover. :D

 

We sold our condo with our cat in it. We left for showings but the cat was there (with a note on the door to "please don't let the cat out") & she is a flirt who would come out & see people. Her box was spotless and there was never any smell from her in the home though. Our condo sold very quickly and at a high price (it was 4 years ago) - so quickly that we had to move and rent while we shopped for a house :)

 

We bought our house from people with dogs. It worked for me because I could imagine my dogs in this house. It's got a very strange lot, quite unfriendly to dogs really as it can't be fenced in entirely due to a creek running through it - the creekbed belongs to the Crown & it can't be fenced over. Previous owners with dogs had done some neat arrangements with the property to give dogs access to a yard & yet leave the creek & natural ravine unaltered. It helped me to see that yes, dogs could 'work' in this house.

 

BTW, to me the most obnoxious smells in houses are mothballs (large Asian population here & a lot of their homes smell of mothballs); cooking smells (sorry, that roast smell would make a vegetarian gag & never mind the ethnic cuisine smells - there were some homes in which I wouldn't want to go past the door); mold; cigarettes; leaky natural gas appliances.

 

I do think if you use an air freshener etc, it should be done WELL in advance of people coming so it doesn't smell like you're trying to cover anything up. Like make-up on a classy woman, it shouldn't draw attention to itself or any flaws lying beneath :D

 

I forgot to mention that I also put on music: very very quiet, romantic type jazz. I wanted to create an ambience of calm and relaxation. Worked for us - we had multiple offers.

[Homemaker]

When we sold our house about two years ago, we went through and took about 1/2 the stuff out of every closet and moved it into the attic, cleared all the clutter out and cleaned everything really well. If you have a pet, send it to be with family while you are selling. Make sure all lightbulbs are replaced. Also I asked our realtor about the family photos thing and he said, he would tell us to put away all the pictures only if we were a minority familiy because sadly it does affect the selling of the house for some people.

 

Our kitchen was on the small side, so I cleared off the counters of mostly everything, even the microwave to give it more room.

[rwjx2khsmj]

My tip is more nuts and bolts for when you are actually showing the house. Sometimes you'll have a realtor call and want to show with short notice. Keep several plastic or wicker laundry baskets that will fit in your car. Before you leave the house for the showing, toss in anything that's out of place.

 

For me, the laundry baskets were a sanity saver. I had little ones so I'd buckle them in the car and then go back through the house picking up the clutter and putting it in the basket to carry out. Then I'd wipe all the counters, turn on the lights and carry the clutter out the door with me.

 

I could put the things away after the showing at my leisure and be ready for the next time.

 

Another thing I did was make sure all the beds were made every morning and make sure kids had their rooms straightened before anything else was done. This cut down panic when a showing came up at short notice especially if we were going to be out for the day. I didn't have to run home in a panic just to straighten if the realtor called and said they were going to show the house at 1:30pm.

 

While showing, we made the playroom the only play area just to cut down on the amount of potential clutter that we had to clean before each showing. Because we had a playroom I never felt like we had to clean out all the toys but I confined them only to that room. No toys in the bedrooms or closets.

 

We made the house sale a family issue and let everyone know why it was important and what they could do to help. I think feeling involved helped the kids (the olders) understand the more rigid routines and expectations and not be resentful of the changes.

[EKS]

Completely declutter. Rent a storage unit if you have to.

 

Completely clean everything. Get behind things, in the cracks, everywhere. Be sure to get hard water deposits removed from faucets, that sort of thing. If you have shower glass that can't be cleaned up beautifully, get it replaced. Wash windows.

[kalanamak]

Meh - I'm neutral on that advice, but then I am a pet lover. :D

.

 

When I toured my current house, I carried their cat and petted it the whole time. Plus, I saw the happy dog patrolling the 3 acres. It was a plus for me.

 

(The cat was moved 20 miles away on the OTHER side of the Puget Sound. 6 months later it appeared, with a collar wrapped around one front leg and very skinny. I don't know if it swam or hitchhiked, but that cat came back. We found it an indoor only home with a nice old lady, we were all so afeared with would try to come back again.)

[prim*rose]

I think it depends on your house. When we sold our house we'd lived in for 5 yrs (the house itself was nearly 50 yrs old), we did the following:

 

replaced countertops with cheapy Home Depot laminate ones - they are cheap, but still looked nice and updated the kitchen

 

replaced all cabinet handles to modernize the cabinets a bit

 

got a storage unit and put everything we didn't need for day-to-day in there

 

painted every room

 

got new vinyl flooring in the kitchen & entry - this was nice vinyl that looks like tile, totally updated the house and made it look newer

 

put reed diffusers in several rooms

 

did carpet cleaning for the rooms with carpeting

 

painted the front door

 

I also kept a list of things we had to do before each showing, like wipe down the sink, straighten the beds, open all the blinds, vacuum, close toilet lids, etc.