When you’re selling your own property, first impressions are everything.
You want buyers to enter your home and immediately fall in love with it. You want them to see how spacious, how comfortable, and how home-like your property is.
A big part of that comes down to staging—the way you arrange furniture and decor within your home.
Staging is a huge deal for anyone trying to get their home sold, whether by the FSBO route or with the help of a Realtor. In fact, there are professional staging companies that will help homeowners orchestrate the perfect first impressions, maximizing their chances of a quick, full-value sale.
Whether you end up hiring an agent, using a staging company, or selling your own property solo, it’s important to be aware of staging best practices. And by the same token, it’s important to be alert for potential home staging errors and issues.
In this post, we’ll highlight just a few of the most common home staging FAILS, and also offer some house selling tips to help you avoid them.
Avoid These Staging Snafus
Not Having a Strategy
When it comes to staging, you should never just be making things up as you go.
Rather, before you start moving any furniture, it’s important to step back and think about the big picture:
- What are your home’s best features?
- Who’s the most likely audience for your home (young families, retired coupled, etc.)?
- How can you best emphasize the key selling points that will resonate with that audience?
Always have a strategy in place to guide your staging efforts!
Having Too Much Furniture
You want your home to feel warm and inviting, and that means having some furniture in each room. (And obviously, if you’re still living in the home, you’ll need furniture for yourself and for your family!)
Remember, though, that one of the primary goals of staging is to accentuate your home’s spaciousness—and the more furniture you have in the room, the more crowded and cluttered it will feel.
Be judicious about the furniture you keep and the furniture you move into storage. Balance is key.
Leaving Your Home Too Personal
One of our favorite house selling tips: You want your house to feel like a home, and you want your buyers to be able to imagine themselves settling down in it.
But if you have a million family photos or highly personalized decor in each room, it makes it hard for buyers to see themselves living in the home; it will feel too much like your home, not theirs.
The same goes for religious paraphernalia, unusual collections—basically anything that could alienate potential buyers.
Overlooking Home Improvements
Staging isn’t just about furniture and decor. It’s also about fixing any unsightly problems in your home.
No home is perfect, of course—but if you have chipped paint, doors that hang a little off-kilter, or anything else that impedes the aesthetics of your home, those issues are worth addressing.
Basically, as you try to get the place sold, your mission should be minimizing eyesores. And remember, there’s no detail too small for a potential buyer to notice it and potentially be turned off, so be vigilant!
Overdoing it With Tabletop Clutter
It’s a good idea to place flowers or elegant decorative pieces on your tables and countertops.
With that said, remember what we said about accentuating your home’s spaciousness! If you fill every surface with stuff, it’s just going to make your home seem cluttered.
Again, balance is key. You can place some tasteful decor without completely overwhelming the space.
Forgetting About Traffic Flow
One final tip: As you stage your home, it’s important to provide buyers with an easy path for walking through each room and for navigating from one room to the next.
As you think about rearranging furniture, don’t just think aesthetically. Also consider the actual logistics of moving around.
Get More Advice on Selling Your Home
Staging your home is an important step to take as you get ready to list—so make sure you approach it thoughtfully and avoid these common pitfalls.
To learn more about the best way to sell your home, request your free home seller’s report from SOLD.com TODAY!
