Texas: Collin County: Prosper: Stage that home to sell it!

This blog post can apply to any home. But, a trend I am seeing come back with some newer listings is the lack of preparation before putting the home up for sale. The make-ready stage cannot be ignored by any smart seller in our area. At the very minimum, these are the things a seller must do to get the home ready for sale anywhere in the DFW Metroplex:

1. Strip out enough personal possessions to allow the focus of attention to be the bones of the home and not the decorations. Staging a home for sale entails stripping away distractions. You may have to walk in and out of your front door and through your own home many times to know when you have it right. Did you notice the size of the rooms and the condition of the flooring, or were you focused on photographs and knick-knacks? If your eye carried to stuff and not structure, keep removing.

2. Don't over-strip the house. You don't want to be compared to a vacant home, REO, short sale, or foreclosure. Minimal decor should only shift the focus back to the house, but it should not take out the life of the home. A whole wall of family photos can be intimidating to the new buyer. One tasteful framed photo in an art niche can still show that real people live in the home. Empty art niche=sad.

3. A trip to the thrift store might help. Staging the home doesn't have to be high dollar. I once had a homeowner who didn't use her gameroom at all. Just before putting the home on the market, she found the hardware for pool table accessories and a few of mismatched pool cues at at thrift store and mounted them to the wall. The buyers assumed she had already sold or moved the pool table, but the room had a purpose and personality.

4. Pets - I'm an animal lover myself, but pets can kill a home sale effort. When we tour a home and there are pet bowls in the kitchen, a big dog bed in the living room, one more big dog bed in the master bedroom, and pet toys inside and outside of the home, we know who is master of that domain. Buyers assume the worst of pets. All signs of pets should be removed from a resale home. We compete in the DFW Metroplex with new construction. If it helped to have pet supplies in the house, the builders would be putting them in the models.

5. Mulch in the landscaping. Yes, it's great to freshen the landscaping with new mulch just prior to listing the house. But, keep in mind that you need to keep the mulch level BELOW the weep holes in your brick or you are not allowing moisture to escape. Soil or landscape materials higher than your weep holes will be noted by a home inspector as being conducive to bringing on wood destroying insect issues. And, one more tip on mulch: Pput the mulch out at least a week prior to the listing of the home. Some mulches smell like they came straight from the cow pasture, and that's not the nicest smell to encounter when bringing a buyer to see your home.

6. CLEAN and CLEAN and CLEAN! After staging the house, it's important to clean the house thoroughly. But, that level of clean needs to be maintained the entire time the home is up for sale. Buyers HATE dirty homes. That's why they go buy new. Oreck makes a terrific product that I use on all my vacant listings. It's a granite countertop cleaner that smells like freshly baked while cake. Yummy! And, the smell lasts for days. The last time I sold my own home, I would put a roast on every time we had a showing. That crock pot would put out dinner smells all afternoon. It's easy to make an emotional connection to a home when it's clean and smells like good food.

7. Be unique. I blogged a few weeks ago about the house we toured where the owner had built a tower of Twinkies on the dining room table for visitors. We talked about that house all afternoon. Another seller left a Starbucks gift card for the buyers and the showing agent, as a thank you for visiting the home. These are nice gestures and different from the usual bottled water. Last year, I had a creative homeowner who glued a small picture card of her home on packs of Extra chewing gum. Here home had lots of 'extras' (gameroom, media room, media room equipment, double kitchens, double utility rooms, and lakefront) that she wanted to keep fresh in the minds of the buyers as they toured. I sold my first home in the month of December, so the home was fully decorated for the holidays and the table was set for Christmas dinner from day one on the market (we just shifted the holiday settings and re-set the table each morning). The house went under contract in 7 days. It didn't cost anything. I just treated the house as if we were having special company - which we were. Our buyer was coming!

I hope these ideas help you get sold this quarter.

Have a blessed day!

Ronda