Staging to sell- quick and necessary fixes for your home

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I was watching a show on HGTV the other day – I think it was “The Unsellables”- when they stated that for each box of stuff you get up and out of your home you will get an average of $800-1000 more when you go to close.

I went back and looked around my Massachusetts home. I am literally sitting on a gold mine.

It is incredible. When you are living in it, you don’t see what’s around you. I used to know (read: be mentored by) a broker who would prep potential seller clients by telephone before she even saw the home. She would say, “Are you prepared to declutter and do small repairs around your home, or are you going to sell it as-is, with a corresponding reduction in price?” She would tell the sellers that she knew they wouldn’t like her while their home was being sold, but they would love her afterward. She even would take the children aside and tell them that she would pay them $100 each at closing if they would pick up their rooms and keep them that way. She said it was the best investment she could make in helping to get a property sold.

Smart lady. I looked around my house, and while I am not selling right away, I am taking care of some projects that I have been putting off.

Paint: the living room was red; the rest of the rooms were dark. Very Early-Trading-Spaces. Off to Home Depot for a little paint (one can I picked up for $5 – only one, but it was enough to make the bathroom beautiful). Now the living room is a rich beige color, which will carry over to part of the dining area walls. I am also painting the trim white. Probably by the time I finish, I will spend about $200 on paint and brushes and stuff.

Tile backsplash: My kitchen is completely nondescript. It should be a happy, inviting place but it has a kind of bachelor-pad je ne sais quoi about it. The color should punch it up, and I have been reading about how to DIY a tile backsplash. The tile I’m looking at is similar to this:

Click on the picture to go to their site for DIY information. I am estimating that this will cost me about $150 unless I completely mess it up and have to call someone to fix it.

Kitchen flooring – needs replacement. We hadn’t even been there a year when it began wearing off in bits and shredding, and it looks really sad, now that we have been there 12 years. I think the cheapest route will cost about $300, although I love tile which would cost much more. But I can always go cheap and put the tile down later.

Get the carpets cleaned! - if you hunt around, this can be done for short money. The kids talked me into getting 2 dogs when they were little, and these puppies were ridiculously adorable when they were tiny.  I did not know that they were going to be huge when they grew up, and that they would consider their full time jobs to be a combination of barking and shedding. The carpets need attention.

I keep seeing the Stanley Steemer ads on TV and it looks like they would do 3 rooms for less than $200.

Bathroom-  Paint, a new light ($100), and matching accessories (toilet paper and cup holders, toothbrush holders about $50). Strip off the old wallpaper trim for an instant room heightener.

And I should get a dumpster. All of the kids are grown except one. So much stuff can go! This stuff isn’t even good stuff that can be recycled – it is stuff that no one in his right mind would want. So why do I have it?

When I finish I will post some “After” pictures. A picture really IS worth a thousand words – and a box of stuff is worth a thousand bucks- and here’s why in some links to some before-and-after staging projects.

Many types of rooms – before and after

From The Stagers

More rooms – the kitchen in slide 5 has my color choice for living room

Enjoy, get inspired, start painting and decluttering! The real point is, if you are selling in this market, these ideas will not only help you sell for the most money in the shortest period of time. They will help you sell… period. “Price gets you interest; staging gets you offers,” says Gary Keller:

Note: I do not agree with the advice for sellers to “Be There” – any other agents want to weigh in on this?

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