5 Ways to Stage Your Home for Less Than $1,000
Suggested Meta DescriptionWhen it comes to preparing your home for sale, you’ll want to make sure you impress buyers with both top notch photography and a great interior.Targeted Keywordshome stagingBody
According to home seller agents, home staging increases property prices by anything between 1% and 20%. Despite increasing the costs, the process also enhances a buyer’s view about a home. This means that their chances of buying a staged property are higher than for a non-staged one.
Despite this fact, it’s always in your best interest to stage your house without increasing the prices. If you’re looking for cost-saving home staging approaches, you’ve come to the right place. Read along for practical tips.
What’s Home Staging?
Before we get into the tips of cutting costs on home staging, let’s first define the process. It refers to the process of arranging house furniture in a way that entices buyers to purchase the property. The overall goal is to make the buyer feel at home when they visit the house.
By staging your house, you present the buyer with an idea of how they can arrange their furniture. It also presents them with an idea of how spacious or crowded the rooms will be after they’ve arranged the furniture. Home staging works for both vacant and occupied homes.
How can you reduce the costs of home staging?
1. Stage Your Home Virtually
Virtual staging works best when your target markets are online shoppers. A slide show full of unoccupied spaces, walls, and ceilings may make the shoppers quickly lose interest in the house. Sellers and real estate agents send pictures of the empty rooms to a virtual stager.
The virtual stager tastefully furnishes the house and sends back the images to the seller for online marketing. Ethical virtual staging practices don’t allow for the alteration of the colors of the walls or floors. They also don’t let the stagers to make improvements on any imperfections in the house.
Remember that buyers will still want to make an in-person tour of the house. Virtual staging will cost anything between $225 and $400.
2. Pay a Profession Interior Designer for a Plan Only
Most home stagers will offer consultation services, tour your home and suggest on improving its outlay. In the first tour, the planner will give you ideas of how to arrange the house. The second tour, done in a couple of weeks after the first, is about suggesting finishes.
The touring will cost approximately $250 for about 90 minutes. It’s upon the seller or selling agent to take note of the given suggestions.
Once you’ve been given the plan, you can do the labor on your own. The cleaning, de-cluttering, and rental for storage space can be costly. Some of the items you can remove from your space are cosmetics, magazines, family photos, toys, and grooming supplies.
Lastly, remember to repaint the rooms if need be. Light, neutral colors work best as they’re widely appealing and make a room look larger.
3. Only Stage the Key Rooms in the House
A vacant house is harder to sell because the rooms tend to look much smaller. When you fit furniture in the rooms, it gets easier for the buyers to visualize how the rooms will look like. Unfortunately, staging every room can be very costly.
If you want to save money, ditch the idea that you have to stage all the rooms. The ideal thing is to stage the rooms that buyers will use the most. For example, the master bedroom is an area of interest for most buyers.
The next essential rooms to consider are the living and dining rooms. Make a few touches to the kitchen, and you’ll be good to go. With these spaces intact, you’ll significantly keep your costs low.
4. Improve Lighting
If you’re staging your home on a budget, one thing that can work in your favor is improving the lighting. You can achieve this by ensuring the lights and fixtures are working perfectly. A great way to test the condition of the lights is to put on all the lights while it’s dark outside.
Walk through all the rooms to see how clear the lights are. If you can’t see clearly consider adding some light fixtures or installing some brighter bulbs. However, ensure the wattage of the bulb is not too strong as to cause electrical hazards.
5. Negotiate a Vignette
A staged home is all about the scenery. For example, choose décor items like a beautiful chair, décor tree, or side table with accessories. This means that you can have the furniture providers bring in things like lamps, wall art, area rugs, and other accessories.
Most of these services are provided at the cost of $250 per month, with the minimum period being three months.
Should You Stage Your Home or Not?
Every selling agent will tell you that it pays off to stage your home. While this is true, the final decision lies with you. With the help of a professional realtor and stager, you’ll reap the rewards of home staging.
They’ll help you design a staging plan that’ll get your home off the market quickly. As you stage the interiors of the house, don’t forget the exteriors. Clean up debris, get rid of dead plants and bushes, and trim the plants.
You may also repaint the front porch and garage doors for a grand look. Take care of all other areas that look less than perfect.
Final Thoughts
When selling your home, it might take you a long time to find a buyer if you don’t revamp the house. Home staging comes in handy to give it an appeal that’ll increase the interest of buyers. Whether the house is vacant or occupied, staging can transform even the oldest-looking house into a wonder.
Home staging can be costly, and it’s only fair that you find ways to keep the costs low. A few ideas include focusing on simple things like lighting. You can also stage just a few rooms instead of the whole house.
Alternatively, stage your home virtually or pay for interior design only and do the actual designing yourself. As you stage the interiors, don’t forget the exteriors of your home. They create the first impression on your potential buyers.
If you have any questions about selling your home, be sure to reach out to us.
