Want to sell your house quickly and for a good price? Discover our comprehensive home staging checklist.
In 2024, the average home in America is on the market for 50 days — significantly longer than a few years prior when a home may sell in as little as a few weeks, but far lower than a decade prior when it could regularly take up to 100 days to sell a home.1
Staging your home is another strategy that –– when leveraged effectively –– can dramatically reduce the time it takes to sell your home. While some home sellers may not want to pay a home staging cost, it can be a worthy investment. By taking on a little home improvement, you can help your home sell for more and in less time. Below, we’ve created a full checklist of staging tips to sell your home faster.
When selling a home, you’re effectively entering into a competition with every other seller and every other property. To “win” this competition, your home will need to stand out in some way –– either in value, amenities, or appearance. Staging your home can add to the property’s appeal while accentuating its best features, appealing to the largest number of potential buyers.
Home staging showcases your home in its best light, helping it sell faster and maybe even at a higher price. But home staging can also have a positive psychological impact on shoppers. By creating a neutral, calming, welcoming environment through staging, you can entice home buyers to take a closer look at your property –– or even visualize their lives in the space.
Executed effectively, home staging can have a huge impact on the process of selling a home, making it a more profitable, painless, and efficient endeavor. As we’ll explain below, there are several simple steps you can take to stage your home successfully.
If there’s just a single staging strategy you can adhere to, it should be to declutter. And real estate professionals agree. A 2023 study from the National Association of Realtors showed that half of all professionals surveyed recommended their clients declutter –– even if they didn’t opt to stage their homes.2 So, why is decluttering so important? Simply put, decluttering helps potential buyers focus on the property itself rather than the personal items and affectations that can be distracting.
These personal touches may be what makes your house feel like home to you, but to home buyers, they can be obstacles standing in the way of visualization. By depersonalizing your home, you make it a blank canvas for buyers, who are then free to imagine their own lives in the space. This means removing family photos, personal keepsakes, and distinctive style choices that reflect your personal taste. The aim is to create a neutral environment that appeals to a broad audience.
Decluttering and depersonalizing are some of the most valuable aspects of staging, and luckily also some of the easiest.
When decluttering, move from one room to the next. This will ensure that every room in the house is as tidy as possible. Consider these tips:
When staging your home, consider the power of a good first impression and focus on the first steps a potential buyer will take in your home. Elevate your entryway by ensuring it’s well-lit –– either by natural light or a soft, welcoming artificial source –– and spotless. A visually appealing shoe storage solution can help keep the space clean and clutter-free, but shoes should be kept out of sight, if possible. Less isn’t always more, however: The addition of a side table with fresh flowers can make your entryway more inviting while adding a fresh scent that buyers will later associate with your home.
A great home staging tip is, as you stage your entryway, you may want to adopt an outsider’s perspective. Walk into your home as a buyer or real estate agent might, examining the sights, smells, and your immediate feelings around the space. This is likely where potential buyers will make their first connection with your home, so do all you can to help foster this connection through effective staging.
You may be competing with other sellers, but there’s a good chance your home has something that theirs doesn’t. Or, at the very least, you can use effective staging to showcase your home’s features better than others. Before you begin the process of staging your home, take stock of what it is that makes your home stand out. Does it have a fireplace worth gathering around? Bay windows or the perfect reading nook? Whatever it is, make sure you’re leveraging staging to make it the focal point of the room.
This is another place where thinking like a prospective buyer will come in handy. While you may have a place in your heart reserved for certain areas of your home, buyers are typically looking for a handful of key features: laundry rooms, front porches or patios, and kitchens with ample storage and room for dining.4 If your home has these major selling points, staging can help you play them up even more.
By now, you may be feeling like your home will need quite a bit of work to sell quickly and above asking price –– and like staging is just one more item on your to-do list. But even the smallest of upgrades and repairs can significantly impact a buyer’s first (or second, or third) impression. Quick fixes like repairing holes or cracks in the walls and repairing leaky faucets can be evidence enough that the home has been well-loved. But there are even easier ways to give your home a visual lift worthy of a closer look.
Consider these simple methods of refreshing your home’s appearance –– and some other proven ways of increasing your home’s value.
You’ve checked every item off your home staging checklist –– decluttering, depersonalizing, and doing everything in your power to position your home in its best light. Now, you can list your home and benefit from your extra effort.
But to make sure that the hard work of staging your home pays off, there are some final items you’ll want to take care of. Professional photography, for one, can help capture the full essence of your staged home, ensuring its allure translates to an online listing. You’ll also want a listing description that speaks to the aspects of the home you’re hoping to highlight.
A skilled real estate agent can help with these tasks –– which is fortunate because listing your home is just the beginning. Negotiation and back-and-forth with prospective buyers are common when selling a home, but thoughtful home staging can give you a strong leg to stand on through this process.
Staging your home can help you sell your home faster and net you a larger return on your investment, but it can’t help you avoid some of the time-consuming steps in the sales process that stand between you and your home equity. Fortunately, Truehold can.
With Truehold’s sell and stay transaction, you eliminate the need for home staging, online listings, and open houses. You receive your home equity in as little as a month and then continue living in your home as a renter.
Want to learn more about the faster, easier alternative to selling your home? Connect with one of our representatives for more information on Truehold’s sell and stay transaction.
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