5 Staging Tricks to Help You Sell Your Home Quickly

5 Staging Tips to Sell Your Home in Ellicott City MD

If you’re selling a home in Ellicott City, your Realtor® will walk through the house with you to give you pointers on making it more appealing to prospective buyers – but check out these five staging tricks that can help you sell faster (and for more money).

Staging your home – the act of making it as appealing as possible to buyers – isn’t incredibly complicated. You can hire a professional home stager if it’s in your budget, but you don’t have to. Use these tips to stage your home effectively:

Clean everything
Declutter
Organize
Depersonalize
Rearrange your furniture

Staging Tip #1: Clean Everything

When you’re selling a house, you’re not just promoting four walls and a roof to prospective buyers. You’re selling a lifestyle – and that lifestyle includes a home that’s clean and easy to maintain.
Before you roll up your sleeves and start scrubbing, find out how much it would cost to hire a professional cleaning service. Then, weigh that against your time. If it would take you 12 hours to scrub the house from top to bottom, but a professional cleaning company can do it in 3 hours for a few hundred dollars, it may be a worthwhile investment.
Once the cleaning company has finished scrubbing the baseboards, dusting the corners and cleaning everything in between, all you have to do is maintain it while your home is on the market.
Professional cleaners have plenty of tricks up their sleeves, too, which makes cleaning easier for them than it is for the rest of us. There’s certainly nothing wrong with cleaning your home yourself, but if you can save time, it might be a good idea to hire an expert.

Staging Tip #2: Declutter

Once your house is clean, declutter everything. Find a place for every item on your counter tops, dressers, night stands and other surfaces. If something doesn’t have a place, decide whether to keep it, donate it, sell it or trash it.
Go through every cupboard, medicine cabinet, pantries and drawers. Buyers who tour your home will open every one of them, so you want them to look good – that way, buyers can carry a favorable impression of your home with them when they leave.

Staging Tip #3: Organize

Back to those cupboards, drawers and pantries: Because buyers will look in them, they need to be impeccably organized. You don’t have to alphabetize your spices (we won’t discourage you from doing that, though), but you do have to make sure like items are grouped together.
You want buyers to see that you have a great attention to detail. Even if they don’t verbalize it, they’ll notice that all your coffee mug handles are facing in the same direction and that you don’t carelessly toss cans and boxes in the cupboards – and they’ll think you’ve been that meticulous with the rest of the house, too.

Staging Tip #4: Depersonalize

Your goal in home staging is to give buyers a springboard for their imaginations. That means it’s time to take down family photos, eclectic decor and anything that might be controversial – even if you don’t think it is. Put away religious items, political memorabilia and even gear that celebrates your favorite sports teams. Replace these items with neutral decor and art that appeals to a wide audience.
The reason? You want buyers to imagine their “stuff” in your space. That’s difficult for them to do if there’s a huge family photo on the wall or decor that they just can’t identify with in each room.

Staging Tip #5: Rearrange Your Furniture

Every room in your house has to offer as much open, walkable space as possible. Buyers will use that space to navigate, and they’ll also use it to visualize how their own furniture will fit.
Take out oversized furniture, furnishings that are damaged or shabby, and mismatched pieces. Put them in storage until you move into your new home.
Buyers will be able to focus on your home’s best features instead of how much furniture you have – and they’ll be able to envision their own furniture in the space more easily.

Are You Selling a Home in Ellicott City?

If you’re thinking about selling your home in Ellicot City, Columbia, Catonsville, Pikesville or Owings Mills, we can help you.
Call us at 410-465-5822 to learn about our innovative marketing strategies that can put your home in front of all the right buyers. It’s our goal to sell your home quickly and at the best possible price, so call us today to learn more!
If you’re also looking for a new home, use these links to check out the hottest listings: