Prepping / Staging a house (San Antonio, Nash: for sale, rent, appliances)
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Hi All....
New here to the forum. Wish I had known about it all this time I've lived in San Antonio! Been here a little over 3 yrs. now and soon have to move again. I'm wondering if any of you out there either stage homes yourselves or have used one in the past to sell a home. I am looking for advice about how to stage my home before putting it on the market this spring.
Welcome to the forum and you have an awesome name!!!!!!! We had to sell our house in Nashville to move here this time last year and we had to stage it. Feel free to dm me with questions!
Rent a storage facility and get rid of all of that clutter! Make your closets and cabinets look like there is plenty of room to store more stuff.
Remove appliances from your kitchen counter. PLacea pretty iron cookbook holder with a cookbook in it next to the stove. Set your patio furniture with colorful placemats and dishes.
Basically you want to sell the dream. You want people to visualize entertaining in your home. You want to sell the "feeling" that your house evokes.
Also, clean your windows and dust the baseboards. Clean, clean and then clean some more. Remove personal photos since they interfere with buyers imagining the home as their own.
Maybe buy new linens for your bed, make it nicely for showings and have a tray with a bottle of wine and wine glasses set on it. Stuff like that helps potential buyers imagine your home as a retreat.
Anyway, those are a few ideas to get you started. Good luck!!
One of the forum members who is currently experiencing access problems is a designer who also does staging. I'm sure that she is quite good, and is probably worth every penny she charges! If you'd like her contact info, just DM me and I will forward it to you.
My personal opinion (based on being a practicing Realtor who is no longer "practicing" due to family reasons) is that staging can only help you in today's market! The market is quite competitive and anything you can do to set yourself apart from the rest can only help. Staging is still not used extensively in SA, so you'd have an edge. In addition, I'd also highly recommend hiring a listing agent who will market your home aggressively! Don't be content with the old rank and file, get somebody who's willing to do more.
This is good advice! My suggestion: if yu have the time, go look at new neighborhoods,i.e. model homes and mimick that! That's what we are doing with our home in East Texas that has not sold. Each time I came to San Antonio to work on this home I would take ideas back! Now, I have to remind myself that I live in a home , not a model home! I have to be practical and remember that we live here! Best wishes!
This is good advice! My suggestion: if yu have the time, go look at new neighborhoods,i.e. model homes and mimick that!
That's exactly right!!! Depending on your area, your main competition will likely be new homes. The models look great, buyers can pick out all their own new stuff, and the incentives that are goin' on right now are insane. Sooooooo.... your home needs to look like a model home, pure & simple.
We just sold our home in Ohio (very bad market right now) in less than a month. That's all due to staging and I did it all myself. It helps to research online, watch home decorating and home selling shows, and read some books. One thing I did that all of the people who came through the house loved, in the kitchen, I set out a pretty glass cake holder with big chocolate chip cookies. I placed a little sign next to it that said "thank you for visiting, please help yourselves" and I also set out some water for them too. Everyone of the realtors left little notes about how nice the gesture was. I also made sure I had a lot of little plants around the house. It just seemed to help make it look lived in and friendly. I also decorated very neutrally. I took down all personal pictures, magnets off the fridge, etc. I also CLEANED like I've never cleaned before. I scrubbed all of the woodwork, baseboards, doors, floors. We had the windows cleaned (inside and out) and power washed the house and fence. We also took all "extras" out of the house. Including toys, books, dvds, etc. I think all of these little things helped a lot. If you have any more specific questions, please feel free to DM me!
I agree with all the previous posters. The suggestions are all in line with the research I did online and more. Especially in today's market, staging is more important than ever.
When we put our house on the market a few weeks ago, I asked the realtor to come over and give us an assessment and be TOTALLY honest about what we should do to get it ready. We ended up making a comprehensive list of her suggestions and we did ALL of them. When the realtor came over a couple weeks later to look at our handi-work she was thrilled with what we did. I asked her if everyone she works with take her advice....her response was "I wish!". Bottom line is it may take you one or two weeks to get it ready for the for sale sign but it will be well worth the effort. We ended up selling our house to the 1st people who looked at it. They had already been shown 38 houses and found something wrong with all of them - until ours. They felt as if they could just move right in and DO NOTHING to the house.
Here's some of what we did:
Put a wreath on the door and purchased a brand new "Welcome" mat. (First impression)
Clean, Clean, Clean and clean some more
Declutter (as others have said - box it up and store it)
Removed most (but not all) personal photos
Strategically placed candles all over the house (hint: light the candle and let it burn for a few minutes and then blow out....don't have a new wick, needs to look as if it's been burned a little bit)
Fresh paint in rooms if you need it and make it neutral color, we used soft yellow)
Clean and organize all closets (get bins at dollar store for loose items)
Towels, sheets and blankets neatly folded in the closets
Freshen up bedding (maybe invest in new bed ensemble)
Freshen throw pillows on couches etc.
Clean off kitchen counters - one appliance (such as coffee pot) on counter
Green plants and silk flowers (I used silk greenery)
Set tables with place settings and napkins
Have carpets cleaned
Make sure the house smells good (occasionally burn some candles or oil, especially if you've been cooking)
And - keep it clean and ready for a showing at a moment's notice Note: You don't have to spend a lot of money, often we can move things around and use what we already have. Or perhaps you could borrow some things from a friend (we all have decorative items that we have retired and would be willing to lend a friend!). Our largest expenditure was that we hired someone to do the painting as we simply did not have the time to do it ourselves.
One of the forum members who is currently experiencing access problems is a designer who also does staging. I'm sure that she is quite good, and is probably worth every penny she charges! If you'd like her contact info, just DM me and I will forward it to you.
My personal opinion (based on being a practicing Realtor who is no longer "practicing" due to family reasons) is that staging can only help you in today's market! The market is quite competitive and anything you can do to set yourself apart from the rest can only help. Staging is still not used extensively in SA, so you'd have an edge. In addition, I'd also highly recommend hiring a listing agent who will market your home aggressively! Don't be content with the old rank and file, get somebody who's willing to do more.
Best wishes!!
Hahah.... you beat me to it, Julesie...
I was going to offer to call our pal and give her the poster's phone number, if the poster wanted to do that....
Birds of a feather, great minds, etc etc... LOL....
My home in Ohio sold in 3 days from the day I sat down and signed the listing agreement with my agent...
I miss my house terribly.... it had LOTS of personal touches, quite frankly, but I had done some fun bold painting, and I did a lot of shabby chic/yard sale/thrift stuff...
I have to admit, it was just a doll house AND a dream house at the same time...
I miss it so badly sometimes, I want to just sit down and cry....
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If you'd like her contact info, just DM me and I will forward it to you.
