Staging Your Home for the 2020 Market

Tracy Cook – Community First Realty

Fuquay Varina – Raleigh – Apex – Cary – Triangle – Your Hometown Realtor

If you’re planning to sell your house, proper staging can make a huge difference. It’s important to keep in mind that tastes change over time, though, and the staging techniques that were popular when you bought the home might not impress buyers today. If you really want to get the most value out of your home when you sell, it helps to employ staging that will appeal to buyers in the current housing market. Fortunately, there are many ways you can stage your home so that it draws in modern buyers. The goal is to help them see your home as a place they could inhabit and fill with their own style, and these suggestions will help you to achieve this even if tastes have changed since you last decorated your home.

Maximize Your Lighting

A lot of modern buyers are looking for function as well as form when they’re looking at houses. One example of this comes in the form of good lighting. Make sure that the windows are clean and that your window dressings allow natural light to come through. Check that you have sufficiently bright bulbs in your fixtures, and double check that none are burned out. You might also consider adding spotlights or other accent lights in places like the kitchen and bathroom where the potential buyers might want additional light. If you really want to wow people, you could even install smart bulbs that can be controlled from a smartphone or smart speaker.

Keep It Earthy

Color trends change over time. At the moment, warm colors are hot. When staging your home, work with accent colors such as chocolate, olive green, beige and wine to tie your various decorations together. This will add splashes of warm, earthy color that’s neither too bright nor too dark. As an added benefit, these shades go well with a wide range of wall and floor options, so you can add some nice earthy accents without having to completely redesign your home beforehand.

Touch Up the Walls

If your walls are too mild or too wild, consider adding a fresh coat of paint before you get ready to sell your home. There are several colors that are popular right now, including a number of shades of blue, gray and green. You can usually get away with some light pink and gold shades too, as well as the occasional off-white. You don’t want anything too bold in most rooms, just something that will give a bit of color to the room. But feel free to skew a little darker if you’re painting a bathroom or bedroom.

De-Personalize the Place

You may have heard that it’s a good idea to make your home look lived in, since that can help potential buyers see it as an actual living space instead of just a showcase. This isn’t bad advice; having some unique decorative items and other accents can really help buyers to picture their own stuff in the house. Just make sure that you take out anything that’s overly personal, like family photos, items with your family name and other keepsakes. Leave your decorations a little sparse, too. The goal is to inspire potential buyers and help them picture where they would put their belongings and their own pictures, and it’s hard to do that if there are pictures of your family everywhere or decorations filling every available space.

Finding the Right Look

If you’re not exactly sure how to stage your home don’t you worry when I list homes I bring in a professional stager to help with occupied homes and to fully stage our empty listings.  This is at no cost to my sellers as I know staged homes photograph better, show better and sell faster!