Consider home staging to help sell your house

Home staging can create an atmosphere in your home that makes it more appealing to potential home buyers. The home stager does more than just a thorough cleaning or adding 

decorations. Proper staging can make your home seem brighter and bigger and create the feelings make the buyers fall in love with it.

Staging involves a lot more than just getting your home ready to show and sell. Staging is added on top of the house cleaning and removal of clutter and repairing that the home owner normally does to sell. Instead, think of it as dressing your home up for a formal party - adding makeup, the right dressy clothing, and gorgeous jewelry. 

A professional home stager combines the skills of a high level interior designer with a practical home decorator to create a scenario to appeal to all of the prospective senses. 

Here are just a few of the tips and secrets they use: 

* Grouping furniture together to create an arrangement (called a vignette)
* Adding sensual fabrics to the home, such as silk and satin
* Reduce knickknacks to a minimum, but displaying 1, 3 or 5 interesting items together
* Changing window dressings with simple draping 
* Draw attention to warm and homey areas by adding interesting decoration to shelves and mantelpieces

Materials used by the home stager

Home stagers use a huge number of props to create a new atmosphere in the house. Some of the items a stager might use are floor and table lamps, mirrors, artificial flowers, love seats, plants, throw rugs, pillows and afghans, inflatable beds, wicker and wire baskets, and small tables and chairs. This is just a basic idea of the types of decorative things professional stagers will use from room to room, limited only by the imagination of the stager.

Staging Tips

Many of today's stagers have an artistic or other design related background. Some are also accredited with an Accredited Staging Professional Master (ASP) designation. These professionals will tell you that the idea of staging is to give buyers a sense of the rooms showing their possibilities. With nothing in the home, or years of personal items accumulated, the home looks like it has not center or soul. Homes that are not staged can sit for a long time on the market.

For example, the pros know that the kitchen is a key area to get buyers interested in the home. Here are some tips to make the kitchen shine: 

- Using orange oil on cabinets can remove the dry, old look, adding a deep shine
- Place attractive bowls containing fruit on countertops or tables, with colorful grapes, big oranges, an polished Red Delicious apples
- Stand some colorful books on the counters, such as entertainment books or cookbooks

Pros also suggest using lots of plants and other greenery to bring the outdoors in. Other areas to focus on are creating clear, well defined rooms by making them easy to walk around and keeping furniture to a minimum. Finally, bathrooms are also important, especially keeping them looking open and airy, not moldy and dark. A favorite tip of stagers is to place baskets in the bathrooms with spa and luxury items, such as milled soaps, body lotions, new towels and other jars with facial creams. 

Think about staging the exterior of your home as well. In the back yard, make decks and patios look inviting by adding potted plants and flowers, and keep the furniture clean and bright. Try setting your outdoor tables with bright picnic wares.

What you can expect to pay for a home staging

The cost of having a professional stager decorate your home can depend on your location, as well as whether demand is high for staging services. Since professional stagers have been common in areas such as the coasts and major cities, prices here may be higher than elsewhere. Many real estate agents have taken courses to learn to help their clients stage their homes as well. It's agreed by most listing agents that homes generally sell better after a staging, and especially vacant homes, so agents recommend it to help sell fast. The fees will vary based on the size of the home and number of rooms. The cost can be a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. 

Greg Cryns is the owner of Flat Fee Real Estate Guide - http://www.flatfeerealestateguide.com