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Spring Home Staging Mistakes to Avoid

Using Dark Hues

Image via: Homedit

Spring is the season of color and brightness. One sure way to drive buyers away is by using dark colors. Choose nice pastels which are warm and inviting and avoid dark shades which shrink rooms. You’ll be amazed at what a new coat of paint can do to your home.

Using Too Much Furniture

The furniture you put in a room needs to fit the space. Don’t use a lot of furniture in a tiny living room, prospective buyers won’t have space to move around and will think you are limited for space. Keep in mind that the key purpose of furniture is to define rooms. Make sure that the furniture in your rooms does not block the flow of traffic.

Image via: Interior Ideas

Not Making Use of Natural Light

Buyers love natural light. Don’t block the path of light with heavy draperies or dark window treatments, use sheers or leave windows open if you can. If your home’s exterior is attractive, make the most of it. Open windows during the day and use large mirrors in rooms to accentuate the views.

Image via: Digsdigs

Decorating with Unbeleivable Artificial Flowers

Home sellers are divided into two categories: those that love fresh flowers and those that love artificial flowers. While fake flowers offer convenience and undying beauty, they can be a major turnoff for buyers. In spring, many flowers are in full bloom. Visit your local garden center and buy a bunch of flowers or a few plants. Many houseplants don’t require a lot of work.

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In this day and age when homebuyers have many options to choose from, staging a home is of utmost importance. However, be careful not to make these home staging mistakes which drive buyers away. Potential buyers want to picture themselves living in your home and it’s hard to do so when all they can see are glaring mistakes.

Are you trying to sell your home this season? Look to Stagetecture’s and the About.com – Home Staging tips.

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.

Are you ready to sell your home but you’re not sure what will make it attractive to buyers? Careful planning and a subtle sprucing-up of your home will help it sell faster and possibly at a higher price. Read on for six quick and easy tips to get your house ready for a sale. 

Image via: Reaume Construction & Design

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Fix Leaky Taps

Don’t give potential buyers the idea your house will need a lot of repairs (unless, of course, it does). Go around the house before you show it and make sure no taps are dripping, no vents are malfunctioning and no windows are letting in a draft. Everything in your home should be in working order, without strange sounds or leaks. Don’t forget to check doors too — do they easily swing open?

Re-outfit the Bathroom

Even if you haven’t got the most stylish bathroom in town, you can make a good impression on potential buyers by purchasing new bathroom accessories. Get a new shower curtain and new rods. Match the new curtain to a bathroom rug and get coordinating bath and hand towels for display. Consider changing the curtain rod and toilet seat too, if they’ve seen some wear and tear. Bathrooms are important considerations when a purchaser is looking at a home, so make sure yours is looking its best.

Inspect the Paint

When we live somewhere, we get so used to looking at the walls and floors that we might not notice small imperfections that have developed over time. Go over your interior walls and exterior paint job carefully, searching for dings and scratches. Repair inside dings or cover holes where pictures have hung before with spackling paste and paint. Outside, see if a quick brushstroke or color-coordinated caulking or spackle can cover the damage.

Image via: Cardea Building Co.

Polish the Floors

Clean, polish and shine your floors. If this is difficult for you to do by yourself, it’s worth it to call in professionals to complete the job. Shined floors send a signal to the buyer that you take pride in your house and they should, too. It also helps in reflecting light to brighten a room. In the bathroom, do what you can to shine the tiles and consider touching up the grout if it has darkened or faded from its original color. For the rest of the house, if you have mostly carpeted spaces, schedule a deep carpet shampoo with enough time for it to dry before the house is viewed by buyers. These steps will also improve the house’s smell.

Make it Smell Nice

Our sense of smell triggers memories and sensations — both good and bad. Aim for a positive impression of your home by making sure your house smells pleasant when a potential buyer walks in. Don’t go overboard with chemical smells as that can cause people to wonder what unpleasant odors you’re hiding. Instead, air out the house by opening the windows for a short period of time. Let fresh air come in and remove any staleness. Next, make sure any potential sources of bad smells are minimized — wash your dog, take out the trash and tell everyone to smoke outside. Finally, use essential oils, scented candles or other subtle ways to perfume the house with natural smells.

Image via: Axis Mundi

Change the Light Bulbs

Even if you’re used to your house’s lighting, think of how it will look to someone new. Well-lit houses are more attractive to buyers, so change the interior light bulbs so your house is shown at its highest potential. Dust lampshades (or even buy new ones) and clean windows so all available light is used. When a buyer arrives, open the drapes and blinds so the house feels more welcoming.

About the Author: Ginny Wells is a licensed realtor in Atlanta. She’s been working in the industry for 17 years.

For more home buying & selling tips on Stagetecture, click here.

When trying to sell your home, first impressions matter. Your home should look its most attractive before you invite potential buyers in for open houses and private showings. A clean, open-space home will appeal the most to potential buyers and help them imagine what the space could look like once they move in.

Image via: BHG

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Clean Those Carpets

A clean carpet is brighter and fresher than one that’s been accumulating dust, stains, dirt, pet hair, dander and odors for years. Save yourself the effort by calling in a professional carpet cleaning team. In less than a day, they can make the carpets in your home seem like new. Give the carpets a day or two to dry before you move back furniture and let in potential buyers.

Clean carpets are crucial to maximizing your home’s sale value, and the cleaning won’t cost as much as installing new carpets. Plus, there’s a chance the new owners will dislike the carpet and tear it out and install new carpet anyway. There’s no need to spend hundreds or thousands on new carpet when a simple cleaning will suffice.

Clear Out Clutter

Even though you might be living in your home while trying to sell it, it’s crucial you make your home appear less lived-in when potential buyers come by. Buyers have a hard time picturing themselves in clearly defined, cluttered spaces. Get rid of clutter through donation, online auction or a garage sale — having fewer things will also prove helpful during your move. Put away things you want to keep but won’t use for months in a storage unit or in the attic or basement.

If you can’t put a great deal away in storage, do your best to make the home appear clean and organized. Remove clutter from tables and counters and move it into cupboards, shelves or boxes. Leave only attractive, simple decorations out in the open, such as flower vases or books on a coffee table.

Image via: Convoy

Renovate Affordably

If money were no object, you’d completely renovate your home before a sale to make it as modern, clean and attractive as possible. Even if you had the money, though, there would be little point to changing your house to suit your design tastes before you pass ownership on to someone new. You can, however, make small investments that will go a long way.

Focus on affordable, small renovations that will help to erase the signs of wear and tear on your home. Some ideas include:

• Painting chipped walls.
• Removing outdated, dusty wallpaper and painting the walls instead.
• Swapping out the handles on cupboards for brighter and cleaner handles.
• Buying new shower curtains.
• Replacing the shower heads.
• Swapping out old curtains for new ones.
• Planting flowers outside the home in spring or summer.

Clean the House

The carpet isn’t the only area that could use a cleaning, although it’s often ignored when sellers try to spruce up their homes. Wherever there’s mold or mildew, you have to get rid of it, as no one will look favorably on that. Use bleach to make tile grout brighter or repaint bathroom walls when necessary.

Clean windows, dust shelving, vacuum the floors and sweep the porch of trimmings and leaves. If you have a pet, run the vacuum one extra time before potential buyers stop by, and use a pet hair attachment on furniture, curtains and anywhere else where fur tends to stick. Even if you’re not selling the furniture, excessive pet fur around the house can be a turn-off. Keep your pets away from the buyers, too.

Image via: Brown Dress with White Dots

Let In the Light

One last thing: If you’re showing the house during the day, open the curtains and let in natural light, even if you usually don’t. If you’re going to have a number of showings at night, put in brighter light bulbs, or add lamps or light fixtures so that rooms appear brighter when people are looking around.

Shanae Rosado is a contributing blogger and real estate agent. She advises sellers on how to spruce up their homes for open houses in ways such as using carpet cleaning by Coit.

For more home staging ideas on Stagetecture, click here.