If you want your home to sell for more than is expected then it is crucial that you have two professionals in place: a real estate agent who can tell you what your home is worth and a home staging professional who can help you present your home to the buying pubic in the most favorable possible light.

Family room in a home staged for sale.
Family room in a home staged for sale.

The real estate agent can help you decide on the asking price of your home by advising you about how much your property is likely to sell for based on the market value of similar properties in neighborhood. This is one aspect of pricing a home for sale that you don’t have much control over. One aspect that you do have control over during the selling process is the home staging. According to most real estate professionals, home staging is worth it if you want to see a maximum return on your investment. Doing the staging yourself might cost only about $100 to $200 but the actual return on that money might also only increase your asking price by $1500 to $2000.  However, homes that are staged for two thousand to ten thousand dollar fees tend to sell for tens of thousands of more than unstaged homes. Before you proceed with home staging, you should first check if there are any immediate repairs you need to work on. For instance, there may be leaky faucets or clogged drains that need immediate attention of a professional plumber.

Staging is also essential if you are trying to sell a home in a down market. The key to staging a home well is to depersonalize it. The space must look crisp, new and like nobody lives in it. It must be decluttered and emptied of personal effects so that buyers can imagine it as a blank canvas upon which they can paint the possibilities of what it would be like to live there. Psychologically, the disappearance of your personal touches to a space allows the buyer to better envision himself living there. Contact a dumpster rental services provider if you will be conducting a major cleaning and decluttering so it’ll be easier to collect all the trash. And for the stuff you wish to keep, you may put them in a private storage unit to make your home look more spacious and tidy.

The reason it is good to get a professional to help you with staging is because it can actually be quite difficult to stage a room so that it is so neutral that it appeals to a large number of different buyers.  It means choosing a neutral color palette that consists of no more than three colors and allowing only an occasional pop of color as the accessories. Home staging professionals are expert at presenting your home in a way that will appeal to the most people possible.

It is also important that the home smells clean and that is absolutely sanitary, try this reed diffuser to give a nice smell to common areas. Bad smells will definitely turn of buyers. If you do not want to spend money on staging it is might be a good idea to pay professionals to deep clean the space and repaint it.

If you hire a professional stager do not be surprised if he or she removes most or all of your furniture and replaces it with smaller, contemporary versions of teak wood furniture. This helps your property-for-sale to look less cluttered, simple and more spacious.

The bottom line is that homes that do sell for the most money are those that are staged. They also don’t linger on the market like an unstaged home.  According to statistics provided by www.stagedhomes.com, 95% of homes that are staged sell, on average in eleven days or less and sell for 17% more.