13 Ways to Make Your Home Look Like a Model

HGTV has a great article pertaining to the the steps necessary to stage your home to look like a million bucks. The article contains the following 13 steps that will give your home that “have to have” look.

1. Make an Entrance. The outside of the home is the first thing people see and it says a lot about what the inside looks like. Most home buyers make up their mind about whether they like a home or not within the first 15 seconds so its critical to spruce up the front of the home. Some bold & cheerful paint for the front door, a new seagrass door mat, and new hardware are just some of the simple and inexpensive things that can be done to spruce things up outisde.
2. Conquer the Clutter. Most people have too much stuff and it can sound like a daunting task, but uncluttered rooms will appear more spacious and inviting.
3. Make Less is More Your Mantra. People not only tend to have too many little things, but they also tend to have too much furniture. There should be no more than 2 furniture pieces per wall and if you don’t use it then lose it.
4. Float Furniture. Professional stagers say too many people have couches butted up against a wall. Try floating your couches awayfrom the walls and envision a figure 8 or the letter H in the middle of the room with clear pathways around it. Many times this technique will make the room seem larger and more inviting.
5. Mix it up. Just because you bought a chair for a particular room doesn’t mean it won’t look great somewhere else. Try moving things around. You can give your house a whole new look just by moving things around.
6. Rediscover Lost Spaces. A lot of what stagers do is creating fantasy spaces. A room for a mediation, an exercise space, a family game room, or a reading room can dramatically increase the value of your home to a buyer. So move your boxes in that room you use for storage and transform it into a room with purpose.
7. Let the Sun Shine In. A bright room that doesn’t seem closed in will look larger. Get rid of the old heavy drapery and put in something light. Just some simple sheers on a tension rods can do the trick. Bamboo or parchment shades with curtain panels made of light cotton twill or or translucent linen also work very well. I love the sheers because the light coming in will be soft and diffused and not harsh like the the lighting you get from direct sunlight coming through a window.
8. Light the Way. Staged homes look great because of the lighting design. Many homes are improperly lit with too few fixtures or just too harsh. To remedy this problem just increase the wattage on lamps and fixtures. The rule of thumb here is 100 watts per 50 square feet. Then install dimmers to control the lighting. Another trick with lighting is layering. A combination of a light from overhead, floor and table lighting, and accent lights create a great ambiance and the layers add interest to the room.
9. Make a Splash with Color. Painting is the cheapest and easiest way to change the look of a room. You can also accomplish this with colored accessories. Find an art piece in a room you really like to draw inspiration for the colors in that room.
10. Paint it Black. Painting old and tired furniture white has been a trick used for years but try painting it black. It instantly updates the look and enhances the other colors in the room. The key here is moderation. Use black on lampshades, accent tables, and picture frames and don’t use a huge black leather couch from the 80’s.
11. Make Your Art Sing. Art hung creatively makes them stand out and shows off the space so don’t just go hanging them high in a straight line.
12. Accessorize with Flair. Accessories with finish off the room. The magic number here is three, but one and five also work well. Don’t place them in a straight line but rather place them in a triangle. Make sure the three accessories vary in size, width, and height. The largest one goes in the back and the smallest goes up front. Another tip is that the eye naturally reads from left to right so placing a striking object in the far right corner of a room will draw attention.
13. Bring the Outdoors In. Stages homes are almost always filled with pricey flower arrangements but you can get the same effect by clipping branches and twigs from your yard and placing them in a tall vase. Its a great way to add a structural piece and add something seasonal to the home.

AOL Offers Nice Staging Tips for Your Home

AOL, the forgotten about internet company that was once famous for sending cd’s in the mail to pay for dial up connections through your home phone line that were slow as hell and the lovely phrase “you’ve got mail”, has really neat pages with tips for staging your home to look bigger, brighter, and inviting to buyers by uncluttering and adding warmth. I’ve been giving these tips for years and a little effort does go a long way to improve the marketability of your home.

Here is the link to the AOL Home Staging Tips page and their AOL Realtor Tips for Staging page.

You can also check out the tips from the National Association of Realtor on video.

The Coldwell Banker Home Enhancement Guide to Dress Your House for Success

If you’ve been considering putting your home on the market and wondering what type of improvements to make, this helpful guide will reveal what buyers are looking for and which tasks will be worth the effort.

Please click this link to download the pdf version of the Coldwell Banker Home Enhancement Guide

Remodeling Cost vs Value

The National Association of Realtor published this report in 2006 for remodeling costs and what value they add to your home. I know many homeowners often are often curious after completing a home improvement project and wonder how much all the effort will add to value of their home. Kitchens and bathroom renovations add the most value to a home regardless of region. I’ve included a pdf version of the report so click this link if you’re considering a new project for your home. Cost vs Value 2006

How To Stage Your Home with links to Video Instruction

An Article in Realtormag on Staging Your Home with $250 by Christina Hoffman.

Could you walk into a room and, in two hours, working mainly with what’s there, make it more attractive to buyers? Taking a cue from “Iron Chef,” REALTOR® Magazine posed this test to three practitioners earlier this year. In the pages that follow, you’ll see just how our stagers rose to the challenge.

In February we dispatched each one, along with a camera crew, two professional stagers (who provided only commentary), and some helping hands, to a Chicago-area home. The practitioners staged a home office, a bedroom, and a living room, respectively. Each had a $250 budget and one opportunity to see the room before the big day.

Our stagers demonstrated how creativity combined with a few accessories, a little reorganization, and ruthless paring can make a property stand out in today’s slower markets.

That’s important not just at showings but also on the Internet, where buyers increasingly rely on photos to narrow their choices, says salesperson Mark Jak, ABR®, of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Chicago.

Even in a fast-paced market, staging can pay off. A survey of 2,000 practitioners conducted by HomeGain in 2003, at the height of the boom, found that staging could increase the sales price by $2,275 to $2,841. Cleaning and decluttering could add $2,093 to $2,378 to the final price. Likewise, a 2004–2005 survey of owners by training company StagedHomes.com found that staged homes sold for 6.9 percent more than homes that weren’t staged.

Such statistics have led to a dramatic uptick in practitioner interest in staging. StagedHomes.com says enrollment in its Accredited Staging Professional designation courses has increased 49 percent in the six months ending March 30, 2007, compared with the previous six months.

Small bucks net big rewards

As our makeovers show, staging doesn’t have to cost a lot or take much time. One of our stagers, Bobbi Williams, relied on items she already had. Professional stager and trainer Lori Matzke looks around sellers’ homes for staging props and stages only key room s— the entryway and any room visible from it (first impressions count), the main living area, the kitchen, the master bedroom, and one extra room, such as a den or deck. “Those are what buyers usually base their decision on anyway,” she says. She also encourages sellers to “tuck away anything smaller than a football. Who wants to pay my fee to pack for them?”Professional staging costs $500 to $1,000 and up for an average-sized home. The price generally includes painting, carpeting, accessories, and labor, but costs can go higher, depending on the extent of the work.

Many real estate practitioners today include staging as part of their marketing services, either doing the job themselves or hiring and paying for a professional stager. In such cases, sellers pay only the cost of new accessories, furniture rental, paint, or new carpeting. Often the stagers — with some help from the sellers — do the heavy lifting.

Sometimes, convincing sellers that their beloved home needs a makeover takes finesse. To illustrate staging’s value, Bobbi Williams of Keller Williams in Chicago tells sellers what she learned from her staging mentor, StagedHomes.com’s Barb Schwarz: “A car depreciates the minute you drive it off the lot. But what’s the first thing you do if you sell it? Detail it. Your home is an asset, so now it’s time to detail it.”

Even getting sellers to recognize the need to declutter isn’t always a cinch. “They’ve been living with clutter for years and just don’t see it anymore,” says Dede Banks, ABR®, CRS®, of Renaissance Realty Partners in Lake Forest, Ill. To help home owners see their houses as buyers would, Banks takes photos of rooms. When she shows them to sellers, the problem areas become more apparent.

Videos can be found at this link STAGING VIDEO.