(Psst….It’s not an OPTION anymore.)

Happy Staging,

I wrote last week about how distracting personal photos can be when it comes to selling your house.

Check out – Old School Thinking: Personal Photos DO NOT make your Home Feel More Like Home When Selling.

I’m in a lot of homes every week as I consult with sellers and I do see many beautiful and stylish photo displays on the wall. Wall Words are very popular right now as well as frames with meaningful sayings that celebrate the family displayed and what is important to them. I see gorgeous black and white photography of families, children and pets.  And let’s not forget those baby shots that just melt your heart!

But when you are SELLING…as stunning as these pictures and wall displays are, they are DISTRACTING to your potential buyers.

 So…now the BIG question….What do we do with these beautiful photo displays on the walls?

• Do we take them all down, patch the wall/re-paint and stare at a blank boring wall?
• Do we add a piece of artwork instead?
• What if we have A LOT of walls with photos?

Don’t despair!  There is a STAGING TECHNIQUE that works quite well.

One of the easiest and inexpensive ways to NEUTRALIZE those family (and pet) photos is to replace the photos inside.

Here’s how in 3 Easy Steps:

Here’s examples of a past client’s home. The pictures to the right were of their children but temporary replaced with neutral black and white photos while their home was for sale.

Remember that there is also a balance that needs to be achieved throughout the house when it comes to all those personal photos.   To achieve this, follow these guidelines:

• There may be some walls that everything will need to come down and you’ll patch and repaint. There may be a wall that will need a piece of artwork in place of the photos. The photo below is a perfect example. DO NOT attempt adding 11 pictures of TREES to this collage and calling it a keeper.  A maximum of 3 photos per frame is recommended.

• If you have a display of photos with all different types of frames, they definitely need to come down. Please do not attempt to replace the photos with the staging technique above using all those different frames. It just won’t work.

• Be sure that all the frames in your display are the same. This creates a nice, clean simplistic presentation that does not distract from the selling features of the room. The example below is a good one. Now, don’t start thinking that the photos in those frames would be fine for selling either. Can you just see the buyer’s getting sucked into how sweet those babies are?  Are they looking at your fabulous fireplace and large windows right now? A good replacement photo would be a landscape. You’ll see in the the far top left hand side of the photo looks to be a far off shot of a hillside and trees. If people ARE in it, and you can barely make them out, it’s fine to keep that one. Landscape of a beautiful hillside, mountain, river, etc. go well with the wording

 

Still unsure about creating that balance with your photos?

Consider hiring a Professional Stager to help you.  Our Staging Consultation is very cost effective solution and we can assist you with creating that balance as well as an overall plan to get your house ready for the market. This takes all the second guessing and stress out of it as you prepare your home.

Happy Staging!    google-site-verification: google44a69e5b4b110599.html

Old School Thinking

Often it is very difficult for real estate agents to tell their sellers that the personal photos have got to go. Sellers can be very attached and proud of their grand displays of their kids and extended families. On the other hand, one of the old school thinking advice I have heard agents tell their sellers is to leave the photos up because it feels more like home or buyers want to see who lives in the home.  Really?

This simply isn’t true.  Don’t buy into that old school thinking. The way houses are merchandised and marketed today are completely different than 5-10 years ago.

Sellers MUST take themselves out of the picture.  If you walked into a house with a large display of these gorgeous old Olan Mills photos I’m showing here (and I’m being sarcastic folks!), would you be distracted?  You’d probably be taking a trip down memory lane instead of remembering those great selling features in that room.

The same stands true for those beautiful up to date baby/family photos and wall collages. Yes, they are a distraction too!

Think of it this way

How would Buyers feel when they came to view you home? You want them to connect and feel like the home could be theirs, right? With all the personal photos, they’ll feel like a GUEST and that they are intruding in clearly someone else’s home. Buyers also get distracted by trying to figure out who lives there and why they might be selling.  And let’s not forget about safety.  Your home will be viewed by the public.  Do you really want to display photos of your family and children for all to see?

Distraction is the Kiss of Death

It equals forgetting about your house and all it has to offer.  They can’t see it. It’s the kiss of death because those buyers just walked out your door and will forget your house completely as they view 10 others that day. Or worse, buyers do remember your house but…it’s more like Oh, yeah, is that the house with 50 photos of their dog? What did that one look like?  Did it have wood floors in the kitchen?  I only remember all those photos.

Bottom Line

Pack those photos up. Let the house be the STAR.  NOT the people who live there. Buyers want to see your home, not YOU.  Doing so will get you one step closer to a successful sale.

Happy Staging,

In addition to discussing cost effective ways to update a space or picking the perfect paint color in our Home Staging Consultation, we like to give lots of great tips in our time together to give you the tools you need to succeed in selling your home.

One of the tips I’m going to share with you today is setting up- what I like to call- the Welcome Center. You should have marketing flyers and the objective is to lay this information out somewhere so buyers can get more information about your house, right?  The reality is that a lot of times this information is overlooked.  Why not make that marketing material work for you?

My Strategy:

The whole objective to the Welcome Center is creating a stopping point for buyers.   It encourages the buyers to take a flyer about YOUR home so when they are looking at the NEXT 10 homes, your flyer is in their hands and they are remembering your property.  It also encourages them to stop and talk with their agent- keeping them in the home as long as possible.  This is REALLY important since many buyers blow through your home in a matter of minutes and we do not want that to happen.

Here’s what you do:

Location:  The best place to set up your very own “Welcome Center” is in the heart of home- the kitchen. Usually the best place is the end of a counter or the center island.What To Add:

The above picture has 3 pieces of marketing materials about the home provided by the agent (you may have more or less).  You add the following:

• a bowl of candy (wrapped mini chocolates or hard candy works well)   Why offer candy?   Well,  just about everyone likes candy, right?   It gets them to STOP.     It feels hospitable to a buyer.  Don’t we love it when we stay at a hotel that has a little piece of wrapped chocolate left on your pillow?  We feel special.  Buyers do too and it gives them a positive feeling about the house and the people who live there.   You didn’t realize there was so much psychology behind a piece of candy, huh?

• a framed photo of the property (I’ll explain how to do that cool collage above in just a minute….)

• a typed tent card offering water bottles in the fridge.  Offer water bottles too?  I’ve got a strategy behind this one too.   Your potential buyer could be going through A LOT of homes in one day including yours.  Wouldn’t it be nice to offer a drink to them and their agent?   Imagine you’re at a family member or close friend’s house and they tell you to help yourself to the fridge and grab something to drink.   There is something about opening that refrigerator door in someone else’s home and it just makes you feel right at home.   That’s really what we want buyers to feel, right?   You can accomplish that with a bottle of water.  Of course, if you choose to offer this- it goes without saying that the refrigerator needs to look and smell pristine too.

I love highlighting the beautiful listing photos by creating a photo collage and framing it to display. This also causes those buyers to STOP and take a closer look at your home through the photos.   There are many online photo sites to make your collage once you have your listing photos from your agent.  Big name places like Walmart.com or Walgreens.com make it super easy to drop the photos in and have a beautiful collage in minutes.  You can simply do a one hour photo and have it sent to the local store closest to you.    The 8×10 size in landscape looks the best in displaying your photos.   Add a black frame and there you have it.   The total investment to do this is about $5 including the inexpensive frame.

And that’s it.

Simple but most importantly, it WORKS.  Let that marketing material work for you and keep those buyers in your home as long as possible. The longer they stay in the house, the more they feel emotionally connected and see themselves living there.

Here’s to your successful sale!

I have a confession to make…I’ve got a thing about staging laundry rooms.   The kitchen may be the heart of the home but many hours are spent each week in the laundry room.  And THAT makes this room a very important space to feature when selling your home.

Many times when I am consulting with homeowners and we get close to the laundry area, they’ll ask if I want to see it because after all, it’s only the laundry room.  In their minds, it’s that space that’s a catch-all for dirty clothes, shoes, coats, 5 cases of water bottles, dog food and old paint cans.   Oh yes! I tell my clients, I DEFINETLY want to see what’s behind that door.

The Laundry Room needs some attention and staging too. This is one space you don’t want to overlook when selling. The biggest issue is getting rid of everything that is not needed so the room can breath and look spacious. Yes, that means you have to find a new home for those 20 pairs of shoes on the shoe rack behind the door, the 40lb. dog food bag has to go and you’re going to have to store all that water neatly in the garage.

Image right: (Hampton Designs)

Here’s a few Staging Tips that can help you transform your laundry room into a fabulous space that buyer’s will love:

DE-CLUTTER:  Get everything out that you don’t need. The only thing that should be in there is the stuff you need to do laundry (detergent, softener, etc.).  Now is not the time to buy the HUGE bulk size bottles of detergent.  I’ll tell you why in a minute.

CLEAN LIKE CRAZY:  Wipe down that washer and dryer from top to bottom. Push it back against the wall if needed. I’ve seen a lot of washer and dryers pushed out with all those hoses showing. Tuck the hoses in while you’re at it.  Think NEAT and ORGANIZED.

PAINT:   Most laundry rooms need a fresh coat of paint and a different color. For some reason, I see a lot of sponge painting in these spaces. Probably because it was a safe room to try your hand at the technique years ago.  I’m speaking from personal experience here and mine looked just dreadful.  Trust me, a fresh coat of paint goes a long way.

STAGE:   Canvas bins and Baskets make a HUGE DIFFERENCE visually when used to store all those detergents on the shelves above the washer and dryer. Buyers do not want to see all those bottles that look like clutter anyway.  It looks so much more organized and fresh staged with these pretty bins and baskets.  This is why you don’t want to hit Cosco for the jumbo size detergents.  I want you to hide the smaller size in the bins.

KEEP UP THE LAUNDRY:   Not letting the laundry get out of hand during selling can be a challenge.  We lead busy lives.  Doing a load a day keeps you on top of the process.   Buyers should NEVER see dirty clothes in piles, in a basket, anywhere. Ever.   The same goes for clean laundry.  It should not be sitting out on the counter or top of the dryer waiting to be put away or hanging around.  Buyers don’t want to see your laundry.  They want to see the space.  Show them an organized room they can emotionally connect to….NOT how much work laundry can be.

HANGERS AND CLOTHES BASKETS:   Yes…we need them to do the laundry but during showings, they should not be anywhere in sight.  Storing all those extra hangers on the clothes rack/shelving is not an option either.  Throw them in one of the bins or baskets or if you are lucky to have a closet in your laundry room, store them there.

HIDE IT:   And one last mention here.  If you have a last minute showing or you are just REALLY behind on laundry (because you didn’t listen to my one load a day advice), make sure you get it out of sight and HIDE those baskets. When I sold our house a few years back, I would actually take those baskets of dirty laundry and hide them on the garage shelves during a last minute showing.  (They were concealed well and no one ever knew!)   I have also been known to take it with me in the car trunk. Hiding it in the actual washer or dryer is good too.  For those that have always kept your laundry up, stop laughing!  The rest of you know what I’m talking about and it’s a great strategy to use when necessary.

Here’s a couple of examples of past clients that followed my advice and created FABULOUS Laundry Rooms:

Happy Staging!