Tips For Staging Your Home For An Open House

Are you considering having an open house to try to sell your home?

If so, you’ve going to want to do some good preparation before your open house.

It’s not that difficult – or expensive – to do, but when done right, a quality open house staging can help you sell your home faster and for a higher price.

If you are looking to successfully stage your home for an open house, here are a few tips:

Depersonalize Your Home Before Showing It

When staging your home for buyers, you’ll want to help them make a connection with it. You should make the house feel like it’s ready and waiting for its new owner.

Start by taking down your family photos, knickknacks, and personal belongings.  Pack them and store them in the garage or a nearby storage facility. This will help buyers feel at home in what could possibly be their new home.  Not to mention it may help you to start moving out.

Make necessary repairs for your open house

Check your house for any damages and look for areas that need to be repaired. Replace what needs to be replaced, and repair what needs to be repaired. Don’t assume that buyers won’t notice, because they might.

If your walls look old, repaint them using neutral colors like beige or pale green. Very bold colors like bright magenta or hot pink might not appeal to some people.

While nice lighting fixtures can certainly make any house look beautiful, dirty or ugly looking fixtures can make any room look bad. Replace broken lamps and bulbs, and clean up old chandeliers or other fixtures by cleaning them or spray painting them.

These tasks may cost you a little time, effort, and money, but you’ll reap rewards if you do them.

Clean and deodorize before showing your house

Don’t open your house to buyers unless you’ve cleaned and deodorized it.

If you have pets, deodorize the carpet. If the carpet continues to smell, consider replacing it. Most buyers don’t want to purchase a smelly home.

Hire professional cleaners if necessary to help you clean various areas of your home, especially the front and back yards.

The front yard will give a good or bad first impression to your buyer, so take the time to groom it and make it look welcoming. Pull out the weeds, mow the lawn, plant bright flowers, give your front door a fresh coat of paint, and replace dirty old door mats with new ones. Also, give the exterior walls a good pressure washing, if they need it.

Buyers will want to see the backyard as a nice place to spend time in. Clean it and put in some furniture like outdoor chairs or a dining set, to make it more inviting. If you have a pool, make sure that it’s clean.

De-clutter prior to your open house

Over packed cabinets may give buyers the impression that there’s not enough storage space in the house, so declutter the cabinets in your home.

Discard all unused items by donating them. If you want to make some extra money, you can sell them. Just make sure you don’t hold a garage sale at the same time you hold an open house.

Buyers will want to see spacious kitchen counters that are clean, so be sure to pack all appliances you don’t really need and leave the counters as bare as possible.

Furnish your home before the house showing

Each part of the house should be presented in the appropriate manner. Bedrooms should feel very comfortable to sleep in, living rooms should feel welcoming, warm and spacious.  Dining areas should feel like great places to eat and have dinner conversations in, and office spaces should be conducive to getting work done.

The right furniture will help accomplish all this.

Get rid of old, ugly furniture. Consider renting furniture for your open house as the right furniture will help your buyers see your home as a desirable place to live.