Real Estate Information Center

Everybody reads articles about preparing a home for sale. I think there’s a problem with those articles. Most people don’t really see what they have. Get someone to come into your home, such as a good friend or close relative, who you think will be honest and straightforward and who you think has a good handle on the real estate presentation world. Tell them to be brutally honest about what should be put away, thrown away, given away or stored.

Most owners love what they’ve done to their homes. And they’re color blind too. So if they’re told to depersonalize, reduce clutter or whatever the advice that is coming their way, they ignore it, unless they’re that rare individual who can take off those rose colored glasses and really “see” their home as others will.

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Yes, we all have secrets, some we can afford to make public, but some others should be kept under wraps. When selling your property you should ensure that none of your personal and private items are left out for prospective buyers to view.

Sure, your stager would have advised or helped you to depersonalize your space; but somehow the day to day items that you use or newly received are left in areas that prying eyes can view.

1. Rumour has it that very many normal people peek into medicine cabinets. Do you really want the prescription medication or medical equipment that you or your family use to be viewed by complete strangers? Those items could send the wrong message to the buyer.

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There are many successful home stagers that are not certified and do quite well. Typically, they have been professionally staging homes for a while and have developed a list of realty clientele who utilize their services on a regular basis. If you are fortunate to be amongst this group of professional home stagers, then obtaining certification is probably not on the top of your priority list. However, if you are fairly new to the home staging business, just starting out or haven’t been able to develop a large customer base, professional certification may be something you should consider.

Obtaining certification credentials will identify you as a professional, a master of your trade with the expertise to get the job done. Realtors look to home stagers as a way to boost their showings to sales conversions. If a realtor has never used a home staging service before, presenting as a certified specialist in the area will gain you additional credibility. Just as home inspectors have become the trusted standard to use in evaluating the worthiness of the purchase price; accredited home staging professionals are becoming the standard that realtors look to for moving homes on the market.

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The real estate market is the slowest it has been in many years. One of the reasons is that many homeowners do not know how to get their homes ready to sell. A new facet of real estate is the home staging of a property for sale. A home stager assists the La Mesa real estate agent to get the home ready to be the most appealing to a broad spectrum of buyers and to showcase the best features of a home. This will help the home seller sell their home quickly and for the highest price. This article will guide you through the various steps you can do to stage your home yourself and get your home ready to sell by an El Cajon real estate agent.

Step One: De-personalize
This is the first important step to stage your home. When a prospective buyer enters your home they want to try to see themselves possibly living there and not evidence of your current family living there. One way to do this is to remove all family photos. Many people like to look at photos displayed in the room and by doing so, they forget to look at the room itself. When thinking back of your property, they may not remember your property well enough to want to buy it but they may remember what your family photos looked like.

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There are many creative and colorful ways to use cookbooks right out of your own home library to stage your kitchen. I would like to show you how you can “kick it up a notch” and actually create a theme around the cookbook you choose. Let me illustrate and explain two examples for you to model.

As one kitchen example for the counter space you can display a pasta cookbook and carry the theme along with decorative oil bottles or a bottle of olive oil with a more traditional Italian packaging. You may also chose to include a pasta dish towel, and a pasta bowl filled with faux tomatoes, onions, garlic and dried pasta.

A more professional and polished look will use the pasta theme throughout the kitchen area. For the bar area you will need to set out bowls of tri-colored corkscrew pasta and add a faux red tomato in the center. These colors really pop against countertops. To refine this setting, I would add a colorful placemat under each bowl to complete the look.

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How many times have you heard the news talk about the real estate market not being what it was a few years ago? I frankly am tired of it, and will not allow the news to determine if my client’s sell or not. As a Home Stager it is my job to help my clients’ prepare their homes to be sold quickly and for more money.

It is important for the Homeowner and Real Estate agents to understand why Staging is so critical and that it should be done before the house is listed. Preparing the home to be shown so it looks its best before the Brokers Open House is a MUST DO! Why would you not have the Realtors see the house at its best? They are the ones who determine if they will show it to their clients.

Another reason that you MUST stage the home before listing it is for the value of the virtual tours that the Realtors use as a selling tool. I am amazed at how many homes that have virtual tours and look terrible online. If you are a purchaser and are using the virtual tours to determine which houses you want to look at, you will be unlikely to let your Realtor take you to one that looks terrible online. So if your a Seller, why put yourself in that position.

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