Tips for Staging Your Home on a Budget
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If you’re planning to sell your condo soon, then staging is an integral part of making the house more appealing to potential buyers or tenants when looking at photos and attending open houses. The idea of staging the home may seem overwhelming and possibly expensive at first glance, but real estate expert Duc Ong wants you to know there are ways to get great results on a controlled budget.
Declutter and Depersonalize the Home
Before you can get around to staging the space, you will need to remove the clutter and depersonalize the house. Decluttering is removing unnecessary things, while depersonalizing is simply removing or hiding things that mark spaces as yours. Depersonalization doesn’t generally come at much of a cost unless you have to paint any rooms to a more neutral colour or change the wallpaper. Otherwise, it involves putting away personal items such as shampoo and deodorant in the bathroom and removing small appliances from the kitchen counter.
Decluttering, on the other hand, is a little more intensive, and it helps to have a plan before going in. The Spruce provides an excellent checklist that goes into great detail about decluttering your home room by room. For example, it suggests sorting your clothing by type, as it makes it easier to decide what you need when you’re looking at your entire collection at once.
Extend this approach to your paperwork and files too. As a way to condense your files, digitize photos, receipts and any other paper clutter. Once you’ve made digital files, you can use a merger tool to combine PDFs into one file that takes up less space on your computer.
Consider Storage Options Carefully
If you’re preparing your home for staging, it’s possible that you may be considering storing some of the things you’re uncomfortable parting with. However, just because storage is available, it doesn’t mean it’s worth your while to store your items. Self-storage facilities can slowly eat away at your income, and that is especially worrisome if you’re on a budget. That’s why it’s a much better idea to hold a yard sale and donate items to charities when you’re decluttering and depersonalizing your home.
Scope Out the Competition
While there are some definite financial benefits to staging a home, such as getting a higher price for your home, you also don’t want to go overboard. You can avoid this by getting an idea of how other houses in your community have been staged. It’s possible to look at the pictures on real estate websites, but going to open houses will give you a more “hands-on” view of what has been done and how the rooms feel when you walk through the house. You can find open houses by contacting Duc Ong, looking for signs in your neighborhood, and searching online.
You can also use what you learned and who you met while attending these open houses to market your own open house when it’s time. It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with home prices in your area.
Stage the Home
Having removed all the unnecessary items from your house and conducted a thorough cleaning, it’s time to stage it. Just like decluttering, staging is more manageable when you have a plan for each room. This will include things like using bright accent pillows in the living room, using uniform hangers in the bedroom closets and painting rooms in a neutral color.
You may also need to get different curtains and bedroom linens if you don’t own anything appropriate for use in staging the home. To stay within your budget, you can try to find items on sale at a department store or shop for them online.
Ultimately, you’re staging your home in order to get the best selling price. You’ll have to make sure that the budget you’ve set is a realistic one that can get you the results you’re looking for. Then, follow the tips mentioned above to help you stay within your budget and successfully complete a smooth sale.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Guest blogger: Hazel Bridges
