Real Estate Matters | Home Staging

Juliet Risdon

Despite what some people might think, properties, even great ones, don’t sell themselves. There are a whole myriad of tasks that need to be completed before your property is ready to be presented to the market.  Granted, many of the tasks are serious ones requiring repairs and overdue maintenance, but none are more fun than the final task of staging your property for sale.

Think of staging as dressing your property.

It’s what you do after you’ve seriously decluttered, painted, repaired and cleaned. Creating a little bit of magic in the property will make your home look cleaner, brighter, more welcoming and ultimately more desirable than others – making other home buyers want to buy it.

Staging is quite different to redecorating.  Staging is all about the buyer, whereas redecorating a home focuses on the occupant and their taste and personality.  Understanding this difference is one thing, but thinking like a professional home stager and then applying a different set of practices is quite another and requires great diligence. This is just one reason why hiring a home staging professional to walk through your home and direct you to make the changes is a popular and cost effective concept.   

So how does a Professional Home Stager do it? They look at the property from an unbiased and unattached point of view i.e. the buyer’s perspective. The buyer will be viewing your property with them in mind and will mentally be trying to asses whether their belongings will fit into the home they are viewing.  Therefore the professional home stager will re-arrange your furnishings to appeal to the broadest based of purchasers.

Home Stagers do not tolerate clutter and the first thing you must do is uncluttered your house. After you’ve had a go yourself, enlist the help of a friend to helping you. Take a deep breath and ask them to point out everything that appears cluttered to them, do this room by room. This includes furniture; you should be able to walk around a room unhindered. All clutter should be moved to storage. Remaining decorative items should be displayed in odd numbers i.e. 1, 3 or 5.

In my opinion, a fresh coat of paint should is mandatory when selling. Remembering that you are looking at your property from the buyers perspective, so you should select from a neutral palette of paint colours. Let cushions, rugs, candles and quirky pieces pick up colour.

Lighting is important too, even if the viewings are conducted in daylight hours, always turn the overhead lights on. If any of the rooms are dull, brighten them up with higher wattage bulbs.

Kitchens are a key selling point in a home and it must be presented in spotless condition. Remember the clutter rule and remove all fridge magnets, school notices and other paraphernalia from the door of the fridge. Put out large bowls of fruit such as polished apples or bright oranges. Keep the look simple and don’t mix your fruits, just one variety will do.  If you have a great cookbook, leave it on the counter.

Bathrooms must be spotless. Think open, airy and sparkling clean. Buy new fluffy towels for the rack or if bench space allows, roll them and secure with a ribbon, display a simple but inviting looking tray of spa type treatments.

Above all, try and enjoy the staging process, if you approach it with a sense of fun, this will be reflected in the overall result. Remember that the purpose of staging is not to provide good pickings for nosey tyre kickers but to make buyers want to buy your property.

Juliet Risdon is a Macau based property investor, renovator and real estate broker.  Having established Juliet Macau Limited in 1994, and now offering “turn key” services for Macau property investors, the company has grown to accommodate investors from all over the world. 

www.JMLProperty.com

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