Top 5 Things to Avoid When Staging a Home

Staging can have a major impact on the way potential buyers perceive your home and on their willingness to pay top dollar for it. At a time when most buyers begin their search for a home online, listing photos of expertly Staged homes can also encourage buyers to take the next step forward and schedule a walkthrough. However, while professional Staging can definitely help your home move faster and sell for a better price, doing it yourself may lead to blunders that can actually sabotage your chances of making a successful sale. If you still decide to stage your home yourself, here are the top five things you should avoid doing.

1. Staging for yourself

First-time sellers often make the mistake of Staging their homes according to their personal tastes, forgetting that they are doing it for the buyer, not for themselves. You may love your collection of dolls or stuffed animals – but a prospective buyer who walks in through the door may find it off-putting.

When you are Staging to sell, you need to prepare your home in such a way that it appeals to a majority of the target market. This means creating a neutral setting that invites buyers to envision themselves living there. All your family photos, posters, toys, beer bottle collections – basically anything that screams you – must be packed up and put in storage.

2. Staging just the main rooms

Another common mistake that many DIY sellers make is Staging just the main rooms, such as the living room, kitchen and bedroom, leaving the other rooms cluttered and half-cleaned. This can work against you when buyers compare your home with other staged homes they have seen.

When you Stage^® a house to sell, even rooms that you don’t use on a daily basis have to be given a makeover in such a way that gives it a purpose. For example, the extra room that you currently use as a dump can very well be transformed into an efficient home office or a third bedroom, adding value to your home in the eyes of a buyer.

3. Not utilizing enough lighting

Lighting has a huge impact on the look and feel of every living space. While proper lighting can make a home look warm and inviting to buyers, a dull and dreary space with inadequate lighting will make them think twice about putting in an offer.

So take a tip or two from professional Stagers and use optimum lighting to draw a buyer’s attention to your home’s best features, while detracting from its less-attractive ones. Ideally, a room should have all three types of lighting – ambient, task and accent – for best results. Also, most people love natural light, so make sure that you open up all those blinds and heavy draperies before a showing.

4. Neglecting the exterior

To sell a house faster and for more money, you need to Stage your home on the inside and the outside. A tired, worn-out looking exterior creates a bad impression on buyers the minute they pull into your driveway, no matter how much time and money you spend on choosing the right furniture or accessories. On the other hand, a well-maintained garden with a warm, inviting porch and an appealing deck hints at potential and possibility. So trim the overgrown shrubs, spruce up the front door with a fresh coat of paint, pressure wash the deck, replace the exterior lighting fixtures, and brighten up the garden with some colorful flowering plants before you get ready to show your house to a buyer. Research shows that the money you invest in landscaping and in improving your home’s curb appeal can bring returns of up to 100 to 200%.

5. Over-accessorizing

Have you ever been to a home that had too many colors, furniture and fixtures that you became dazed and could not really see anything? That is what happens to a buyer who walks into an over-accessorized home.

Remember that when it comes to accessories for home Staging, less is more. Every object or piece of furniture that you use to stage your home should blend in with the whole and add to the purpose of the room. Always make sure that there is enough space to walk through your house without bumping into furniture or awkwardly placed houseplants.

  Kurt Jacobson writes about all things rental related for the website RentFinder.co.