NEW YORK (CNN/Mondy) - All the world is but a stage, and your house is no exception--especially when it's for sale. So before buyers come through, you must play your part by staging the place.
Staging, the practice of dressing up a home so that it has maximum appeal to buyers, may help you sell in weeks rather than months. It can also increase the sale price by thousands, though you need only spend hundreds. The reason: Though the enhancements may be purely superficial, they enable prospects to envision your home as theirs.
"Staging is nothing more than helping the buyer see themselves living there," says Mollie Wasserman, a Massachusetts real estate agent.
Charlene McKenney had a good intuitive grasp of staging fundamentals before selling her home in Milford, Mass., last year. She invested considerable sweat equity painting and stenciling rooms, washing windows and scrubbing floors.
McKenney's work paid off when the house sold in one day. "We had one evening with nine showings, and from that we got three offers," she says.
A well staged home is never empty, even if the owners live on the opposite coast. Furniture is perfectly in place and the kids' rooms have stuffed animals on the bed. The lawn looks like you're hosting a garden party this weekend, because you've retained a local service to maintain it.
Keeping your home perfectly staged isn't as toilsome as it used to be. McKenney's agent hired a contractor to videotape the home, create a virtual tour, and post it on the Web. Thus, she only had to do her dishes for serious prospects with whom the spotless layout had already passed digital muster. "On the Internet," she says, "your house is always clean."
Of course, binary code won't take out your trash. So put on your sneakers and turn on your stereo, there's work to be done. Here's a checklist:
- Throw stuff out. The first and most important task is to clean and de-clutter your dwelling. Be ruthless. If you haven't used something in the last two years and it's not an heirloom, get rid of it. Pack everything else that you don't need on a regular basis. You'll have to pack anyway to move to your new home, so consider this a head start. Make home storage spaces look as neat and open as possible; rent a storage unit if necessary.
- Scrub everything. Scrub it again. The house should be as spotless as you--or a professional cleaner--can make it. Wash windows inside and out, and take down heavy curtains that block light. Open the blinds. While you are showing the house turn on the lights, even during the daytime.
- Get rid of all pet-related messes and smells. Consider having the pet stay with another family or at a boarding facility while you're showing the house. Pets can be distracting if they enthusiastically greet visitors. Worse, they can make a house smell funny or look terrible. You never know which buyer will be allergic or just averse to animals.
- Rearrange furniture for more open space and better traffic flow. In a tiny house, this could mean emptying out some rooms entirely. In a large house, it could mean actually adding furniture to demonstrate a room's potential.
- Pack up anything that's too personal or too interesting. Minneapolis realtor Mary Alice Kopf recalls a man whose hobby was painting nudes. He had fourteen such paintings in his bedroom -- a considerable distraction to potential buyers. Remove most or all of your family pictures, butterfly collections, guns, trophies, children's drawings, refrigerator magnets, or anything else that says this is my space, not yours, to potential buyers.
- Evaluate your taste. After you've taken down your license-plate collection, take a fresh look at the rest of your decor. Paint anything that needs it, and consider tearing up old shag carpeting and refinishing the wood floors underneath. If the property has already been professionally decorated you can probably leave it that way, but if not consider hiring a decorator to spruce up the entryway and main living spaces. Use a decorator who will do just a few rooms and who will either lend you objects or work with what you already own.
- Look outside. Don't neglect to primp the house's exterior and grounds. Power-washing can brighten faded paint at a fraction of the cost of repainting, and cleaning and straightening rain gutters can do wonders for your home's curb appeal.
- Mow that lawn. A well-presented lawn can add thousands to the sale price, but you may only have to spend a couple hundred to make a good impression. Re-sod any sparse patches and add flowering plants and ground cover. For a final touch -- or if your home doesn't have a yard--put pots of flowers on the deck or by the door.
- Don't forget the basement and the attic. Though they aren't living spaces, they're nonetheless important. To ensure that the basement doesn't appear damp, touch up water marks, repair cracks, and install dehumidifiers where necessary. Similarly, clean the attic (though this may be a first). If the furthest recesses of your home have a pleasing appearance, this conveys an impression of overall quality.
