Nowadays, home staging is an integral part of the home selling process. The impact of home staging is crystal clear, but how you go about it deserves some consideration. Many homeowners will hire a home staging professional, trusting their expertise to make their home as appealing as possible to buyers. However, if hiring a professional isn’t in your budget, taking a DIY approach to home staging can deliver its own benefits.

7 Tips for Staging Your Home Yourself

1. Declutter

The first rule of home staging: make it tidy! A well-staged home should make potential buyers feel comfortable and at ease. To make that happen, it’s important that the spaces in your home are free of clutter. Consider investing in storage bins or a separate storage space temporarily to pare down the items in your home as much as possible.

2. Deep Clean

To really make your home sparkle, it will need more than a cursory cleaning. On top of your usual cleaning routine, get those hard-to-reach and uncommon spots throughout your home that will make it feel spotless. Putting some elbow grease into your bathroom surfaces, underneath and behind furniture, baseboards, and all switches and handles will make a difference when guests enter your home.

3. Fresh Paint

Not only does adding a coat of fresh paint do wonders for the look of your home, it’s a low-cost, high-ROI investment for a DIY project as important as home staging. Going for neutral colors will help to create balance in your interior while appealing to a wide spectrum of buyers’ tastes. It’s the splashes of color on top of a neutral foundation that will help guide visitors’ eyes from room to room.

Image Source: Getty Images – Image Credit: irina88w

4. Curb Appeal

You only get once chance to make a first impression on potential buyers visiting your home and upping your curb appeal will give you the best chance of wowing them. Take a trip to your local hardware store and prepare to spend some time working in the front yard. Projects that improve the look and quality of your lawn, flower beds, walkways, outdoor lighting, windows, and trim will impress buyers and can increase the value of your home.

5. De-Personalize

Once a buyer pulls up to your property, you want to give them every opportunity to imagine themselves in the home. That’s why it’s important to de-personalize your interior and let them fill it with their own imagination. Remove all family photos, notes, personal gifts, and the like from your home. Aim for a décor style that’s not too ornate and not too bland—think calm, simple, and clean.

6. Focus on Accents

Once you’ve applied fresh paint, boosted your curb appeal, and de-personalized your home, you’re ready to add décor accents. Again, the most important thing is that buyers feel comfortable in your home, so your accents should reflect that notion. Add area rugs that are inviting but not too loud, keep freshly folded towels in the bathroom, and consider adding house plants throughout your spaces to make them feel natural.

7. Design Hacks

A few key design hacks will help you round out your DIY home staging project. If you’re struggling with making the smaller spaces in your home feel comfortable, try adding a mirror. Mirrors help to reflect light and can help narrow or cramped spaces feel bigger. Arrange your living room furniture in a way that emphasizes the room’s dimensions. Since you’re designing your home with open houses in mind, the TV no longer needs to be the focal point of the living room.

For more information on preparing to sell your home, helpful tips on working with an agent, moving checklists, and more, visit our Seller Essentials Home Selling Guide.

Featured Image Source: Getty Images – Image Credit: PC Photography

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In order to sell your home, it must be successfully marketed to potential home buyers. Developing a winning strategy to attract as many buyers as possible to your home is something your real estate agent will work on, and part of that process may include staging.

Staging doesn’t just involve decorating your home; it’s using furniture and décor to reveal the possibilities in the space in order to make it appealing to a wide variety of buyers. It is an important step to helping buyers imagine the space for their own use, and it often leads to a higher dollar value and quicker sale time.

Staging for Buyers

A well-staged home creates stunning photographs that will attract buyers as they search online. In 2020, 97% of home buyers used the internet to search for prospective homes, and about half of them used mobile devices like smart phones and tablets. Because photos on a mobile device can be quite small and easily swipeable, staging has the potential to grab a buyer’s eye and pull them into the listing. Once they visit in person, staging serves to elevate your space while allowing buyers to visualize themselves living in your home.

Investment and ROI

For a relatively low investment, the return on investment (ROI) for a staged listing is worth it for just about any home seller. No matter the size of your home, the average investment on staging is 1% of the sale price of the home. And that 1% investment can lead to amazing gains. According to a 2020 survey by the Real Estate Staging Association, of those who spent 1% on staging, 75% saw a return of 5-15% over the asking price. As this shows, investing in staging can turn into one of the best ways to add value to your home.

In addition to increasing the dollar value of your home, staging is also likely to lead to a quicker sale. In 2020, staged listings sold after an average of 23 days on market. That’s two days faster than the national average of 25 days on market in the same year.

Your real estate agent can connect you with a professional stager who they will work side-by-side with to create a cost-effective strategy for staging your home and getting it sold in the most efficient and effective manner.

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