The Show-Ready Home: De-Cluttering and De-Personalizing
Selling a home is a multi-step process that first involves de-cluttering and de-personalizing. This is the easiest and cheapest step in preparing a home for sale. Share the following guidelines with your sellers to help them sell their home more quickly and for top dollar.
Pack away all non-essentials. This pretty much means that you should pack every single thing you don’t use on a weekly basis including seasonal items and clothes and shoes you rarely wear. You want your closets and cabinets to almost look empty. Buyers want plenty of storage and if your cabinets and closets are packed to the brim, buyers will subconsciously draw the conclusions that the house is small and cramped. Plus, packing things away before the house is sold will save you a lot of packing when it’s really time to move.
Store bulky furniture or furniture that doesn’t have a specific purpose. Large furniture makes rooms feel small and it diverts buyers’ attention from the home. In general, living rooms should have sofa, a coffee table, a couple end tables, and maybe an armchair or two. Bedrooms should have a bed, a couple nightstands, and a dresser if the room is spacious. Dining rooms should have a table and chairs. These aren’t hard and fast rules, but unless your rooms are extra large, any furniture than this will make rooms feel smaller than they are.
Remove all photos and items of a personal nature. This is a tough, but important rule. Every single personal photo needs to be put away. You also need to pack souvenir items, hand-made accessories, children’s art, etc. Buyers need to connect with your house and will be trying to picture themselves living there. Personal photos and other items impede a buyer’s ability to connect with your home.
Pack up all knick-knacks and tchotchkes. Your decorations should be minimal. A few tasteful accessories are fine, but a bookshelf covered in knick-knacks is not. One to two accessories per piece of furniture is plenty (e.g., a centerpiece in the middle of a coffee table, a centerpiece on the dining room table, two accessories in the middle of a coffee table, a centerpiece on the dining room table, two accessories on a mantel, etc.).
Clean out closets, basements, attics, and garages. Again, you want buyers to be able to find a place for their things. If your basement and garage are full, buyers immediately wonder how their things will possibly fit in your house. Go through each of these areas and throw out, donate, or pack away all non-essentials.
Consider storing unnecessary items in a storage unite while your home is on the market. A storage unit can be costly, but most successful home sellers would agree that this is an investment that will pay for itself in your home’s sales price. When packing for the storage unit be realistic about the things you actually need to keep. If you haven’t used something in over a year, do you really need it? Consider donating the clutter and save time and effort during the moving process.
Contact Lemondrop Home for staging consultation. We can help you get your home ready for sale and we can walk you through these showing guidelines so your house is presented in the best possible light to make a lasting and positive first impression. You can call us at 816.309.4985 or you can email us at rebecca@lemondrophome.com.