The Best Ways to Achieve a Quick Home Sale

Invest in a good home inspection

The last thing a seller wants to hear is that a homeowner’s inspection exposed a serious problem. This can cost lengthy delays, added expenses and possibly the loss of a sale. Before going through the trouble of finding the right realtor, negotiating a fair asking price and clearing out your home for showings, invest in a home inspection. Companies like HomeTeam specialize in home inspections for buyers, sellers, and realtors. The small financial investment you make will pay large dividends by reassuring you that everything is in check. If the inspection should reveal a problem that needs your attention, you can take care of it before you list your home.

Curb Appeal will Help your Home Sell Quicker

The best way to attract potential buyers is to make your home stand out. While you can’t change the design of your home, you can make it attractive on the outside. Take a stroll around the property to see what areas need the most attention. If you have a fence that’s a few years old and showing signs of wear, you can either paint it or replace it. Around your home, it’s beneficial to remove branches and debris, trim shrubs and make any minor repairs to your driveway, walkway or deck. Also, make sure to mow your lawn for the listing picture. Many people looking to buy their dream home check new listings daily and here first impressions really matter.

For a Quick Sale try Staging your Home’s Interiors

A potential buyer wants to walk into a home and imagine their furnishings in it. If your home has a lot of clutter it may appear smaller than it actually is. This can turn away a potential sale. Instead, clean out your home and put extra items in temporary storage so that it appears open and large. There are also a number of ways for short money that you can make it attractive and stage your home to sell faster and to attract more interest in the property. Add a fresh coat of paint to bedrooms, your kitchen, living room, and dining room. Replace curtains with sheers that brighten up the interior. Also if your hardware on closets, doors, and cabinets is outdated, replace them. The same goes for faucets in your kitchen and bathrooms. These minor changes will allow the home to show well and get your asking price.

Depersonalize for a Quick Home Sale

While you love the colors and enjoy seeing the family photos displayed on hallway walls, someone looking to purchase your home may not. Someone looking to buy a home wants to see a clean slate with lots of potential for their finishing touch. For a quick home sale, remove the knick-knacks, take down the pictures and paint walls that have bold colors. A neutral palette and a clean space let a buyer use their imagination to customize it to their liking. If you choose not to do this, many will not be able to see past it and decide instead, to simply walk away.

Get a Reputable Realtor to Sell your Home Faster

Of course, you can declutter and add curb appeal and still not sell your home quickly if the asking price is out of line with the value of the neighborhood. Signing on with an experienced realtor can play a vital role in selling your home quickly. The longer a home sits, the more likely you are to reduce the asking price. Instead, sign up with someone who knows the area, the recent home sales and what it takes to attract buyers. An experienced realtor will know what a fair asking price is for your home and the area. This will get you the best chance for achieving a fast sale and help you to close on the other end in a timely fashion.

Before putting your home on the market for sale make sure that you invest in a home inspection, make minor repairs and stage your home so that it looks its best to potential buyers. By doing this, you’re giving yourself the best chance possible for achieving the ultimate goal, a quick sale.

For more home selling tips on Stagetecture, visit our archives

Essential Moving Tips for Relocating your Family

After the moving truck has pulled away and the adults are tied up with setting up housekeeping, getting new driver’s licenses, and activating utilities, kids are just trying to find a way to entertain themselves. And while it’s not as important in the practical sense as what you are doing, it is the most important thing for them.

Consider Moving Companies that will help in an Efficient Move

The first thing you need to do is to plan for an efficient move. Use some of the clever moving tips from Allied to organize, protect, and quickly unpack your belongings. For example, photograph your electronic connections before unhooking TV’s and DVR’s to speed the reconnection process at the new home. The less time you waste in the transition of belongings, the more time you’ll have for helping your kids with the transition.

You’ll still need to take a break from the unpacking and re-organizing to build some time for the kids. A positive long-term experience is rooted in a great first impression, so be sure to help them develop an enthusiasm for their new surroundings right away.

But your kids won’t just live in your house or in your neighborhood. They have a whole routine that will involve moving about in the community just like you do. The faster you can build this routine, the more the kids will enjoy the new town.

So the process of getting them acclimated to a new place and finding new things to do should be structured around their routines. For example, you might frequent a certain coffee shop not only because of the quality of its products but also because it’s located near your workplace.

Part of what you’ll look to do will be to resume familiar recreation, but you will also have the chance to get into new things. Here’s how you can do each of those things in your new town right away.

Before Moving Forward Learn the Amenities of the Neighborhood

Got an athlete in your family? A musician? What about a hiker? Learn to find neighboorhood amenities for your kids to do doesn’t have to mean you start over with totally new activities.

Check on local soccer leagues and see who’s taking new players when you arrive in town. Help your kids find the sporting goods stores where they’ll start shopping for gear. If it’s a musician you have, find the stores, performance venues, and instructors that your kids will be interested in. Encourage them to seek out other musicians. Take your outdoor enthusiasts to locate the area’s hiking trails and other adventure destinations.

Start a New Chapter After Moving

Sometimes a move can help your kids broaden their horizons. If the band at their old school was decidedly too dorky for your uber-cool kids, you may find that a Friday night football game in the new city will expose them to an impressive marching band that lures them right into music.

There may have also been no way to participate in certain activities back home. A relocation from the mountains to the coast will open the door to surfing and deep-sea fishing.

Moving Tips: Create a Fresh Start in a New Home

Whatever the transition–geographic, climatic, or social–a fresh start can be a great time to build new activities for your whole family to enjoy together.

You’ll never be able to fully duplicate the old hometown when you are in a new one, but you can take advantage of the things that are different to build a new experience for your kids. You can also replicate some of the best things about the old haunts. If you can frame it this way for your kids–we get to do the things we’ve always done, but we also get rid of the boring stuff in exchange for exciting new stuff–their enthusiasm and acceptance will be higher. The key is to make this a priority and be involved alongside them!

For more moving and home staging tips on Stagetecture, click here.

How to Stage a Home with Confidence 

Buyer Appeal is your Main Priority

Almost every home, condo or apartment can benefit from staging. The goal of home staging is to create a mood that buyers can emotionally respond to. Every house can look better with carefully placed plants, flower arrangements, updated lighting & appliances, less clutter, and less personalized statements and images. The potential buyer wants to walk into a house and see himself or herself – not the current family in a picture perfect frame in each room. No house is perfect – but staging works to help overcome any imperfections your house may have.

Catch the Buyers’ Attention with your Home Staging Efforts

Like anything else in this world, you have only a few second to catch someone’s attention. For an advertisement, it’s about 3 seconds, for most buyers it’s 7 seconds after stepping over your home’s threshold. Over 95% of buyers agents say that home staging has some effect on the buyers’ opinion of your home and 32% of buyers’ agents believe staged homes increase the dollar value buyers are willing to offer by one to five percent.

HGTV gives you 30 can’t miss home staging ideas to help your moving efforts.

Staging a home isn’t an option; it’s a requirement these days. With good staging, buyers will recognize how your home could be their new home. By following a few useful tips and tricks of the trade you can stage your home in an effective way that showcases the best assets of the house, impresses buyers and sells promptly. With bad staging, your home could be left languishing on the market for much longer than you’d like.

Keep Your Budget in Mind to Avoid Over-Staging

When staging your house, there are rooms that can yield more benefit than others. In addition to the ever-effective curb appeal updates such as mulch, new shrubs, and simple decorating tips, we have focused on the 3 most important rooms of the house: living room, master bedroom, and kitchen.

Houzz lends 21 staging tips to help you sell your home.

Did these tips help you learn how to stage a home? Go through your home and determine what is a high priority. These home staging tips should help you save money, make your home more appealing to prospective buyers and help it sell more quickly and at a potentially higher price than an empty, white-walled or over-cluttered house.

How to Stage a Home Infographic:

Take a look at this infographic that sums up all you need to consider when staging your home. It’s perfect to pin to Pinterest and to keep referring back to.

For more home staging tips and moving tips look to these categories on Stagetecture.

Is there anytime of your life more stressful and time consuming than relocating homes and moving your home furniture? Whether you are moving away to college or you are relocating to a new city for your job, saving time and energy moving your furniture is essential. I’m excited to pair with CORT Furniture Rental to show you how you can put more energy into making your move a smooth transition rather than suffering from a sore back and wasting precious hours of moving time trying to get furniture. We also give you some helpful tips for saving time when packing!

Don’t worry about the hassle of furniture movers:

When I talk to sellers and buyers in the moving process one of the biggest concerns is not just finding a nice home, it’s ensuring their current furniture is going to arrive safely. I’ve heard countless stories of lost and damaged furniture along the move and that’s why CORT Furniture Rental is a perfect option. They offer various furniture packages to help your new place feel like a home without the hassle of furniture movers.

These moving tricks will help save you time:

Before you get stressed about your move follow these easy moving tips:

• Start packing boxes as soon as you learn of your move. Begin packing up items you have in excess such as towels and bed linen from closets. In your storage areas like basements, attics, and garages begin to make room for packed boxes to clear clutter for other parts of your home. Pack items you don’t need on a daily basis to make packing easier week by week until you move.
• Find out the size of home you’re moving into and plan what items should be sold, donated, thrown-away before packing. Purging your household can save you time, moving expenses, and energy!
• Ask family and friends to help you pack and make it a fun occasion! Offer to reward their efforts with pizza and drinks to take some stress off of you while still keeping loved ones involved in your move.

Make your relocation efforts less stressful:

If you’ve ever relocated to a new city you know that dealing with long distance moving companies can be a nightmare! Coordinating times, getting estimates on pricing, and having a “watch dog” over your items throughout the move can make relocating more stressful than necessary.

CORT is perfect for:

• Military families who are relocating to a new city
• Business relocations for your job
• College students who are staying in off-campus apartments
• Starting a new chapter of your life in a new locale

Skip the furniture store and consider a move-in ready package:

One of the best features of CORT Furniture Rental are the move-in ready packages that take the guess work out of you choosing furniture piece by piece. If you want specific pieces you can certainly choose them, but many families and individuals don’t have the time. The move-in ready packages help you rent furniture and skip the furniture store sales person experience and helps prepare your new home for living.

Are you planning a big move soon and not sure where to get started? CORT Furniture Rental is a good place to start. Learn more about their move-in ready packages or look through their furniture store selections to make your future home perfect for you and your family!

4 Easy Changes to Prep Your Home for Resale

These four simple steps for freshening up your home can help you secure an offer without investing tons of time and money, so you can focus on life in your new home. 

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Image via: Home Ideas

1. Improve your Curb Appeal

While the interior of your house is where your potential buyers fall in love, the exterior has to give the right first impression. Real estate professionals say that the quickest ways to boost your curb appeal are to clean, lighten, and refresh your décor. Replant your flowerbeds with bright, seasonal flowers to draw the eye to the door – which you can give a breezy facelift with a fresh coat of colorful paint and a few new address numbers. Hire a pressure washer to clear the front walk and patio. If you don’t already have outdoor lighting installed in your landscape, you can buy some solar-powered fixtures for a quick install, with no power cords or batteries required. 

2. Neutralize Colors Throughout your Home

Painting an entire house is a full-time job that can take weeks to accomplish. When you’re trying to do all of the other preparations that selling a house involves, a full repaint might feel overwhelming, but you’ll be amazed what a huge difference it can make in the overall appearance of your home. The key to painting for a resell is to find the most neutral color scheme possible. So while you might enjoy bright colors and vibrant hues, they’re particular from person to person, and you might risk a potential buyer who isn’t feeling it. Go for a light beige and khaki tones for a warm, light-filled, and neutral décor that feels calm and welcoming. It’s universally appealing, and one of the easiest ways to increase your home’s aesthetic value without major renovations.

Image via: Designer Threads

3. Organize your Home Before Buyers Come

Cleanliness and order are a homeowner’s dream. While you may not live up to it in everyday life, your home should promise buyers that the potential is there. It can be as simple as keeping clutter off the floor, like children’s toys, clothes, and packing boxes, but it applies to the overall organization of the home as well. As Realtor.com highlights, Each room in your home should have a purpose – even if you have to make one up. Everything should be intentional, from the pictures hung on the walls to layout of your furniture. And, as always, keep it clean!

Image via: Pottery Barn

4. Bring in Lighting that is Welcoming

It’s pointless to have bright colors and clean rooms if they aren’t lit well enough to see them. While natural light is always wonderful, not every old home is blessed with the windows to provide it. If opening all your blinds still isn’t doing the trick, try putting in a few fresh light fixtures from a neutral and flattering designer. They’ll appeal to virtually any buyer, and they’ll make your space seem larger, brighter, and happier than before.

Every home is different, and every home requires different work to bring it to the forefront of a buyer’s attention. But these four keys are a good baseline to get you started. As long as the house is clean, bright, and welcoming, buyers are sure to see the value, and you’ll have an offer to buy in no time.

I Join About.com as their Home Staging Expert

If you aren’t familiar with About.com I encourage you to read this article on Fast Company. They pull in more than 100Million viewers a month and they are now making themselves a destination site, rather than just a site you fall upon from the search engines (which isn’t too bad either… right?)

Home Staging Tips & Tricks

As many of you know I started of Stagetecture as a home staging site, thus the name ‘Stage’ (Staging) and ‘etecture’ (Architecture). I’ve always been passionate about helping home sellers and homebuyers with staging, organization, decluttering, and home selling tips and tricks to help them move to the house of their dreams.

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Join me at Http://homestaging.about.com for ideas that will help with:

• Home Staging
• Decluttering
• ROI (Return on Investment) Upgrades
• DIY Projects
• Seasonal ways to appeal to buyers
• Real Estate tips
• Decor Ideas that will help buyers and sellers!

Follow the About.com – Home Staging Pinterest Board

Don’t have time to go through the website? Follow the About.com Pinterest Board that highlights all of the posts quickly and helps you pin ideas to your own moving ideas mood boards!

Follow Ronique Gibson {Stagetecture}’s board About.com – Home Staging on Pinterest.

If you need to quickly access the site – look for the About Home Staging icon in the sidebar of Stagetecture.com.

Don’t forget you can always get helpful moving advice in the “Moving | Realty” category here on Stagetecture.

Home Staging: Preparing your Home for a Summer Open House

Image via: Homes

Curb Appeal

The first appearance that potential home buyers will see is your curb appeal. So you will want to give it some TLC, such as clearing away any clutter and miscellaneous items that you or your kids may have left around. Also mow you grass, trim the hedges and if you can add in some planters around the walkway or flowerboxes. The cleaner the space is the better for them to picture how they can occupy that area.

Make the Space more Inviting

You want your guests to feel invited and at home while touring the open house. Add a few touch ups to the spaces within your home. Such as a fresh coat of paint to the front door and perhaps replacing the house numbers with better ones, de-personalizing the rooms in the home and instead adding in simple summer accents to help accentuate the home and bringing in more natural light. Also, add in new linens and furniture accents (throw pillows and blankets).

Image via: Houzz

Focus in on the Storage and Space within the Home

Most buyers really love if the home has storage and plenty of space within it. If you can, clean out all of your closets, storage spaces, and or garage helping to better display their qualities that they can offer to the buyers, you can rent a storage unit to place the items that were in the areas. Rearrange the furniture so that the buyers can truly get a good essence of the space that the home has.

Image via: Retro Interiors

Have Welcoming Surprises for Guests

Since it is pretty warm during the spring and summer seasons, turn on the AC unit and have bottled waters and little snacks for your guests to enjoy during the open house. Be sure you clean out the areas that are more public like the kitchen and bathroom areas very well. Place neutralizing air fresheners within the home and fix any repairs within the home so the it won’t fall into the purchasers lap. Set up the open house some time from noon to 3 or 4pm, that way it is not too early nor too late in the day.

Selling your home can be a great experience and having an open house allows potential buyers to see what they are really getting themselves into when purchasing the home. You want to be able to show others the great value that purchasing this home will bring. So read over the tips above and see how they workout for you and your home selling.

For more home staging tips on Stagetecture, click here.

Home Staging Tricks: Ensuring your Kitchen has Buyer Appeal

Image via: Lime Design Bend

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Kitchen Staging: Give it a Cleaning Treatment

To save your bank, you have to invest physical labor to your kitchen staging. The first and foremost job that needs to be done is the cleaning. Clean it thoroughly so that it sparkles brightly. Empty all the horizontal surfaces in the kitchen and get rid of clutter like receipts, notes, keys, and things like that. Sweep and mop the floor, brush the baseboards, and vacuum the corners. Dust ceiling fans (if any), polish chrome fixtures, wash the stoves, and replace burnt-out light bulbs. Wipe down all the cabinets, polish the hardware like handles and knobs, and even consider replacement if anyone is worn out. Lastly, remove all cleaning products and sponges from the sink counter.

Stage your kitchen with organization

After cleaning everything, organize the place. Organize everything in the cabinet and stack up the dishes and plates there in a neat manner. Organize the cleaning supplies under the sink. Remember not to leave dirty dishes in the sink or in the dishwasher. Most of the buyers have a leaning to check the dishwashers. Keep the counter completely clutter-free except one or two decorative items or a cookbook. At last, take the trash outside.

Image via: HGTV

Give the Buyers a Sweet-Scented Welcome

The possibility of selling the home will be reduced 50% if a strong odor welcomes the buyer the moment s/he walks into the kitchen. So, consider dining out the night before and the day of an open house if you typically cook meals that leave a lasting odor. To treat the buyers with a sweet smell, bake a mint cake, burn a few sweet-scented candles, or place a pot full of fresh flowers on the counters.

Make your Kitchen Look Spacious

If your kitchen is small, you should apply a few tricks to make it look spacious because the vision of cooking and taking foods in a cramped place is not a very pleasant one. Replace the bulky chairs and large table with something slicker. Lighten up the place by making ways for natural light to get in and installing one or two lighting fixtures if necessary.

Image via: The Kid Collective

Finally give finishing touches to the place by making some minor tweaks like placing a rug under the table, arranging plants on the counter and windowsills, putting ceramic figurines and books in the bookcase, and hanging artwork on the walls. All these things will bring a homey feeling to the place.

Use these kitchen staging tricks to help selling your home faster.

Home staging goes beyond cleaning and decorating. It’s about creating certain moods. It makes your house look brighter, warmer, and bigger and makes homebuyers want to buy it. When looking to sell your home, stage every room and not just the main ones. Even your child’s bedroom has to be in tiptop shape. If you are limited for ideas, here’s how to do it.

How to Perfectly Home Stage Your Kids’ Room

Image via: BHG

Decluttering your Kids’ Room

If you haven’t rented a storage unit yet, it is time to. Pack up your child’s toys and sort them by type. You can put dolls and their accessories in one container, cars in another, and action figures in another. For every toy you pack, keep one for your child. Put the smallest and largest toys in the storage box. The smallest ones create the biggest mess, and the largest ones take up the most space. Keep the toys your child remains with out of sight when showing buyers your home. These include electronics in teenagers’ rooms.

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Create a Theme

Image via: Home Interior Project

Parents love kids’ rooms with themes like sports or cartoon characters. It is therefore important to consider these when staging your child’s room. However, make sure that the room does not feel one-sided as you may put off some buyers. Focus on creating a look that will appeal to the masses. Your child will enjoy staying in the room and homebuyers will be attracted to the perfect look you provide for their children.

Let in Natural Light

Image via: Pinterest

Kids’ rooms with little light look dull and unappealing. They may be beautifully decorated but send the wrong message to the buyers. Use bright and cheery curtains or sheers to let in plenty of light. Place only a few items on windowsills to avoid blocking light. If the room does not have windows, paint its walls a bright hue like orange, yellow, blue, or light green. You can also mix two or three coordinating colors.

Home staging should be an enjoyable experience and not a difficult process. Look to the above tips when staging your child’s room. You’ll transform the place into a sanctuary and make homebuyers want to make an offer.

For more kids’ rooms ideas on Stagetecture, click here.

Want to get the best value for your home? More often than not, people are thinking of home improvement for comfort and an increase in its sale value. Home improvement depends on your budget, resourcefulness and the purpose of doing so. Whether it’s for the purpose of selling or showcasing, any amount of increase is always a welcome development.

When you want to increase the value of your home, a decent home improvement plan is your best option. Don’t worry about the cost. The increase in the value of your home is worth every penny. Check out these effective ways on how to increase the value of your home:

Cheap Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home

• Apply new paint

There’s no better way to make your home look fresh and stunning than applying new paint. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a different color, but a superb repainting job will never let you down. Painting your home interior and exterior will provide a welcoming ambiance and make your home look bigger and brighter. Just be careful in choosing and combining your paint colors. It’s best if you will consult a designer or have some research before you decide the paint colors.

Image via: BHG

• Install new fixtures

Replace your old lighting fixtures and accessories with new and trendy items. This will complement your interior and exterior by providing highlights to your design. These fixtures will command attention to your potential buyer and boost their interest. Remember to look for quality before you consider the design. A smart buyer will be able to identify such feature.

Image via: Hubbardton Forge

• Organize everything

Before you present your home to your potential buyers, you have to make sure that everything is organized. Remove the furniture that isn’t necessary and donate them to people who need them. This will provide you with extra space and will make your home interior look bigger than its actual dimension.

Image via: Houzz

These are just some of the few ways to increase the value of your home. Consider these options and get the best value for your home.

For more home ideas on Stagetecture, click here.

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