When you’re trying to get your home sold, proper staging is essential.
It’s through staging that you make your home appear spacious and appealing; it’s through staging that you make the strongest possible first impression on potential buyers.
Yes, staging is an invaluable step in the process of selling a house—and when it’s done right, it can help you get the place sold ASAP. But by the same token, staging that’s done badly can send buyers scurrying.
In this post, we’re going to look at the dark side—five home staging FAILS that can scare potential buyers away. Needless to say, you’ll want to avoid these errors at all costs.
What Not to Do in Home Staging
- Making the home feel too personal.
Here’s one of the toughest tips for selling your house: You gotta get rid of some of the family photos and knickknacks. A common mistake is overdoing it with these personal artifacts, believing it makes the place feel more “homey.” But your buyers need to be able to see themselves living in your home, and that can be hard to do when you have a zillion photos of your kids in every room.
- Overdoing it with personal décor.
Same concept. You may love decorating your living room with your huge collection of snow globes or antique thimbles, but not everyone thinks those things are as beautiful as you do. Try to keep your rooms welcoming—and not too specific.
- Cutting corners.
Again, staging is one of the most important steps in the process of selling your house. That means you need to put some time into it. If you try to do it all at the last minute, the results will suffer. Example: Plugging in a bunch of artificial air fresheners isn’t nearly as appealing to buyers as opening your windows early in the day, letting fresh air breeze through.
- Over-staging.
Yes, you can do too much. Remember that one of the primary goals of staging is to make your home look big and roomy. That means leaving some empty walls and negative space. Creating too much busyness and clutter is counterproductive.
- Overlooking the little things.
Finally, note that in home staging, no detail is too trivial. Fresh fruit in the kitchen fruit bowl. Decorative hand towels in the bathroom. Potpourri. A rubber ducky on the edge of the bathtub! These little touches can go a long way toward helping potential buyers have a great experience in your home.
Staging is essential—but so is using the right data to guide your home sale. To get that data, along with tips for selling your house, request your SOLD.com report today!
