It’s not easy to prepare a home for sale. Despite the numerous benefits to selling your home, we’d be lying if we said that the path from deciding to sell to closing is trivial. There are dozens of different ways to rearrange any of the rooms in your house to produce different effects, and you’re able to conjure any number of images in the way you present your space. The challenge is striking the balance between maintaining the authenticity of your space, and getting it to a point where any potential buyers could see themselves living in that space. If you’re still living in the home at this point, that can be an important balance to maintain, and there are a number of tips that will improve your living conditions while you stay that also make potential home-buyers fall in love with your place.

The Tips

1. Declutter
2. Get Some Storage
3. Improve the Exterior

An Excuse To Clean

Clutter is a reality in all of our lives if only through its sheer persistence. Some of us naturally spread more clutter than others, but the fact of the matter is that we all produce some form of disorganization in the intimacy of our homes from time to time, and that’s not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. The thing about clutter though is that it can drastically change the appearance and image of your entire home if it’s presence is visible around the house. If things appear out of order everywhere, potential buyers start to question how you’ve been treating the house itself and whether you’ve been neglecting other aspects of the upkeep of the building. Even a pile of papers left on a desk can create a question about how serious you’re taking this open house: there is an expectation of putting a certain degree of effort and care into preparing the house for potential buyers, and if people notice that there are some parts of the house that haven’t been spruced up for their visit. , wWhile it might not say anything about the house itself, it can be distracting, to the point where that’s what people remember instead of your beautiful porch and carefully-arranged furniture. Plus, with the time that you’ve got left in the house, it’ll improve the look and feel of the space for you too, and potentially it could carry over into your new place for a completely revamped approach to cleanliness. In order to facilitate the decluttering process, it might make sense to rent out some storage space as you prepare your home for the market.

Store Your Excess For Success

Less equals more in house staging, and the less random accessories you have in your home, the better. You want a highly curated home with furniture and objects arranged in exactly the right way to achieve the look and feel you want; having too much, or leaving in beloved pieces of furniture that just don’t fit the mood you’re trying to create, can do more harm than good for your prospects of selling. But you don’t want to just shuffle around your unused furniture throughout the home, since potential buyers will question that even more than your initial layout. That’s why renting out some storage space is a great idea. Not only does it help open up the space for viewing, it also prepares you for the process of moving out when the sale finally closes, since your belongings can stay packed and ready to transport at a moment’s notice. You’ll also be able to experience your home with a totally new feel, allowing you to consider different ways of using your old furniture, or transitioning out some of the furniture that you realize no longer fits with what your vision of your home looks like. But there’s no reason your improvements need to stop at the inside of the home: you can focus your efforts on the exterior as well.

Read The Book By Its Cover

When we live in houses for years, we can start to become so familiar with certain aspects of our homes that we barely even notice they’re there. The outside of the home is absolutely one of these areas, and it can be easy to think that the indoors areas are more important since that’s where the buyers will actually live; but the look of your house from the street is the first impression they’ll ever have of visiting your house, and it’s also what people passing by will see of the house if they just chance upon your open house on a drive. The exterior is incredibly important to maintain and beautify because of this, and steps like power washing, planting flowers and visually-stimulating plants, and doing what you can to make the approach to the house as welcoming and spectacular as possible, will create a welcoming and impressive atmosphere before anyone even steps inside. The outdoor look is your chance to set the tone of the viewing before anyone gets to the interior, and just like decluttering your space it will leave an impression on viewers if you get it right. So make sure to put some thought towards the outside as you’re preparing your home for the market.

Staging your home for the market can be a daunting process, and we hope that this list has given you some ideas for how to make the process more manageable. There are dozens of tips and guides written by others online, like this one from HGTV, and if you feel that you need more to be comfortable then feel free to seek them out and glean whatever information you can. At the end of the day, the best staging is the one that you feel communicates the flavor and identity of your home best, and we at HER wish you luck in your home-selling journey.