Staging your home

At the end of the day, there are a few key things that sell a home. First of course is price. Nothing is more critical than pricing it correctly. However, a close second is staging it correctly. A properly staged home - which highlights all your homes pluses and distracts from its negatives - will help you to sell faster and for more money. A service I provide is doing a walk-thru with clients prior to listing their home where we go room by room to assess what needs to be done to get the home ready to sell. This includes staging advice, minor repairs, and any other changes I think might help.  I want the home to look as perfect as possible before the first potential buyer ever walks through the front door. First impressions are everything! 

Click here for an excellent article which gives great tips for properly staging your home, which I encourage all homeowners to read prior to listing. 

These pictures are examples from my listings where I helped my clients to stage their home (while they were still living in it, with their own belongings) and you can see what a difference it makes!

When your Realtor tells you to declutter - just do it

Admit it - you are just as addicted to HGTV as the rest of America. So don't pretend you don't know what is coming when I meet with you to list your home. Every buyer wants to walk into some version of Pottery Barn, and that means clearing out all of those mementos of life that you have collected over the years. I am sympathetic, it isn't easy; the way you live in your home is innately counter to the way buyers want to experience it. You drink coffee every morning - buyers want to see wide open expanses of empty counter in kitchens. You have a 2 year old - buyers want every living space to look like something out of Dwell magazine. Believe me, I understand it isn't easy. But if you want to get the most money for your house, it is important.

This is an extreme example, but see what happened to one couple who had an amazing home in an amazing location but just couldn't bear to box up the mementos from their life.

As I remind clients: you are moving. Go ahead and pack away all the "extra" that you can - it will make it that much easier come moving day because much of your belongings will already be in boxes, and in the meantime it will make your house much more show-ready. That's not to say the 50 porcelain roosters that your grandmother passed down to you aren't special, they just may not be everyone's taste so best to go ahead and bubble wrap them now.

We have the same goal as you: sell your home as quickly as possible, for the most money as possible. So in this vein, the more you can do to maximize your home's first impression, the better.

Trust us, we are the experts.