Basics of Property Management: Screening Potential Tenants

3 Home Staging Secrets The Pros Use

17 March 2015

Jesse Obrien

Staging a home correctly can yield faster and more profitable sales. Knowing how to do it like the real estate pros can be a powerful tool for selling your home even more quickly. Here are three home staging secrets the pros commonly use.

1. Highlight the character with curb appeal.

Whatever character the house naturally has, play it up on the outside. This will hint to the buyer from first glance what they can expect to see once they enter the house. Here are some examples:

• Does the house have a cozy cottage atmosphere? Dress up the windows with removable window boxes filled with a bounty of annuals. If it's not flower season, fill them with evergreen boughs, pine cones and sprigs of winterberries.
• Are you staging a stalwart colonial? Install a wrought-iron handrail by the front stoop. At the step bottom, install a boot scraper. Fasten a large brass vintage knocker to the front door.
• Is the home nestled behind trees at the end of a long drive like an English manor? Place a stately metal placard on the mailbox post with the family who currently lives there. 

2. Add intangibles to set the mood.

There is more to a home's feel than meets the eye. Professional home stagers know to titillate all the senses with intangibles that favorably influence the home shopper.  Here's how to do it.

• Avoid using chemical cleaners on your home the day of the showing. Clean the day before so no lingering smell of disinfectant is present.
• Use your choice of plug-in room deodorizers in natural scents, oil fragrance sticks, eucalyptus door wreaths or vases of fragrant fresh flowers in every room.
• Play light background music in the house. Optimal genre choices include classical, instrumental piano, soundscape or New Age. Many cable packages have music channels that you can tune to, or you can hook up your phone or music player to a speaker. Keep the volume low so the music is ambient but not overpowering.

3. Add subtle hints of a lifestyle.

A cluttered house doesn't appeal to many home shoppers, but home stagers know that a few subtle hints of a lifestyle lived can invoke unconscious warm and fuzzy responses. Here's the right way to do it:

• Place a new kitchen towel in a seemingly "haphazard,"  but neat position next to a mini-sized empty baking sheet on the kitchen counter. If the towel has a pattern with muffins or cookies, all the better.
• In the bedroom, toss a new silk (or faux silk) nightgown over the back of a chair, or across the foot of the bed.
• In the living room, leave a folded newspaper and a pair of men's slippers near the footstool or couch.

Now that you know these professional home staging secrets, you'd better get used to the idea of selling your home, because it will probably fly off the market.

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