A Guide to Home Staging Like a Design Pro
When you sell your home, selling quickly, and maximizing the purchase price can help you purchase your new home, too. Your realtor will probably recommend that you work with a home stager to make your residence look as fabulous as possible. Houses staged professionally sell 88 percent more quickly than unstaged homes or do-it-yourself staging. Professionally staged homes sell for 20 percent more than other homes. Home stagers can cost quite a lot to hire though, so you might want to budget and do it yourself.
What does a home stager do?
A home stager redesigns the interior of your home using the furniture and other materials you already own to maximize its sale value. To properly stage your home while you still live there, you might need to pack some items and place them in a storage unit. Ideally, your home will be empty when you show it to prospective buyers, but sometimes you have to live there while you show it.
The stager may list things you need to repair or remove to make the best impression on potential buyers. They also may suggest improvements to the home that could significantly increase your home sale price. Their training in interior design and psychology best prepares a real estate property for sale. This type of interior designer uses design and organization strategies to accentuate its best features and use coordinating colors to improve the home’s appeal to prospective buyers.
Cost to Hire a Home Stager
If you have a spare $1,500, you can hire a professional home stager to provide consultation, organize your belongings, and redesign your interior. They may charge an extra fee to also tackle the exterior of your home. This type of designer works for a flat rate. You can hire them for a one-time staging consultation, or you can hire them on a monthly basis.
You may find the latter necessary since, in some areas, a home may not sell for up to a year. While the typical cost of home staging ranges between $1,600 to $2,400 per month, you will find that the range for hiring per month starts at $500 and goes up to about $5,500.
If you own a particularly large home, the stager might charge a per room cost. This can include a décor rental fee. Per room costs range from $500 to $600. The typical monthly cost for a property of 2,400 square feet ranges from $2,000 to $2,400. Staging a condo costs a little less since they typically contain a maximum of three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The condo costs range between $1,200 and $2,000.
Other Costs for Home Staging
A home typically sells quicker when empty. Potential buyers want to see the vast space as they would get to decorate it. If you’ve already moved out, the home staging might only consist of cleaning the home, adding some music, and baking some cookies to serve at open houses.
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If you need to still live there, your designer will try to work with the furnishings you have. These might not suit most people’s tastes though or your furniture might have stains. In these situations, the designer will either rent you furniture typically used in the staging projects by the company or ask you to rent furnishings of a specific theme. Typically, furniture rental occurs only when selling a high-end home.
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You may have recently painted one or more rooms. The interior designer might suggest painting over that if you used a bright color. Homes sell best when painted all white, cream, or light gray.
The cost to paint one room measuring 12’ x 12’ ranges from $300 to $800, depending on where you live and the cost of the materials you use. You might find it cheaper to have the entire interior painted since many companies will only charge about $1.50 per square foot.
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While you might think of home staging as only relating to the interior, it also relates to its exterior. According to the home advisor, you’ll pay an average of $2,958 to hire professional painters to paint your home’s exterior. That cost varies from $0.50 to $3.50 per square foot for a home of 1,500 to 2,500 square feet. Larger homes cost more to paint.
A Range of Services
You can hire a home staging expert or home designer for just a staging consultation, or you can hire them for a furniture arrangement placement. The range of services offered includes:
- Initial walk-through consultation,
- Essential consultation and organizing,
- Essential consultation, organizing, plus redesign,
- Color design,
- Furniture arranging,
- Decluttering, packing, and organizing,
- Complete staging,
- Décor and furnishings rental
What If You Can’t Afford a Home Stager?
Those talented at home decorating can probably do it after reading up on the topic. Staging successfully means making the home look ready for the buyers to walk in through the front door and live their life there forever.
Cleaning
The most important item is to thoroughly clean the home. Buyers want a fresh smelling and completely clean home.
You don’t have to own an opulent home for it to sell quickly. People want to imagine themselves in the house and having it sparkle helps with that. If you have never done a deep clean on a home, you should hire a service like Merry Maids to take care of it for you.
You’ll need to scrub the kitchen appliances if you did not buy new ones. You will also need to pay added attention to the bathrooms and clean them behind the toilets. The goal of this cleaning is to make the home appear new.
Packing
Regardless of when you will move, pack everything you don’t actually need in boxes and store it in an off-site storage unit. Only leave yourself what you would have on a two-week vacation plus enough pots and pans to cook with so you can cook meals. This helps you depersonalize the home. You need to make it where each buyer can walk in and imagine their own furniture in place.
Add Fresh Flowers or Keep Your Potted Plants
Purchase a few fresh potted plants or if you already garden, keep a few at home rather than move them to your new digs. Get rid of any dead or dying plants, or at least place them outdoors so they don’t detract from the staging.
Paint and Wallpaper
Remove wallpaper. Most homeowners want a blank slate to create their own look. They probably don’t share your taste and will need to replace the wallpaper. You can save both, time and money by removing the wallpaper and repainting that room along with the others.
Flooring
Rip out any dirty carpet or stained flooring. A dirty carpet or scuffed floors will immediately drop your sale price. Replace linoleum anywhere your home has it because it makes your home seem outdated. Choose hardwood flooring or veneers for a great look that installs quickly and requires little maintenance. These types of flooring also add to the value of your home.
You can re-carpet bedrooms with dirty carpet. If you have relatively new carpet with no stains, you can have the carpet steam cleaned to make it look and smell like new.
Define Each Room
If you still have to live in the home, organize the remaining furnishings to provide a defined use for each room. Turn unused attic space into an office, a finished basement into a media room, a bonus room into a guest bedroom.
Bake Cookies Before Each Showing
When you bake cookies, you make the house smell inviting. You also help create ambiance for the buyers. Your real estate agent would do this when working alone, but if you remain in the home, you can do it. Other ideas include a vanilla-scented plug-in air freshener if you cannot bake.
Lighting
Replace older fixtures to give your home an up-to-date look. Make sure every light fixture has a new bulb and that all of the lights turn on properly. Open the curtains and blinds to let sunlight pour in and flood the room with natural light. This won’t cost much since light fixtures come cheap but do think about the style of the room first. The home office doesn’t need a chandelier even if you catch it on sale. Wall sconces for the bedroom on either side of where the bed would sit make sense though.
Patch Wall and Ceiling Cracks
Fix any foundation problems first and foremost. Patch cracks in the ceiling or walls inside and outside. You should hire a professional for both of these items. If you do discover foundation problems, you will need to alert buyers to them or provide the receipt for repairs. This isn’t a nicety; it is the law.
Remember Curb Appeal
You’ll need to address the home’s exterior, too, with more than just a coat of paint. Have the lawn mowed and edged. Also, have the home power-washed, including window washing. Weed the flower beds. If you don’t have flower beds, put a few in and make them look nice. Choose flowers that complement the home’s exterior colors.
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Final Thoughts
You have a lot of preparations to make in order to sell your home. Let Goalry help. Sign up for a free member key and we’ll provide access to a massive amount of articles and blogs to help you learn about home staging, curb appeal, home loans, earnest money, and many other topics related to selling or buying a home. Get started today.