Tips Your Agent May Not Tell You
May 16, 2013 § 2 Comments
Selling your home? 
Here are a few tips from a home stager:
- Caulk the cracks. Nothing sticks out more as you’re walking through a de-cluttered house than cracks — in the grout on the floor tile, along the baseboards in the bathrooms, in the corners of a room where the walls meet the ceiling — a prospective buyer will spot all of them. A little caulk, silicone, or other repair will make those ugly black lines disappear and make the paint job and floors look fresher too.
- Up the wattage. I know, I know. Everybody wants to save money by using compact fluorescents or other energy saving sources, but believe me, to sell your house, you are going to need light. And if the house is not flooded with natural light from the windows, the agents will turn all the lights on. Make sure the lights in your house actually light up the house.
- Raise the ceiling. Obviously if your ceilings are over 9 feet high, you can disregard. But if you have low ceilings, like in a one-story traditional ranch home, then either remove your window valances altogether or mount them just below the ceiling so that only the window molding and any raised shade are covered by the valance. This will add more light to the room and make the ceiling appear higher. Same with the window side panels. Mount them about 2 inches from the ceiling and your ceiling will appear higher.
- Roll up the rugs. Small scatter rugs around the house break up the visual “flow” of the rooms and make the floors appear smaller. You can have a rug at the entry but ditch the little scatter rugs in the bathrooms and kitchen.
- Hide the jewels. Once your house goes on the market, strangers will be wandering through. That may seem obvious but you should think about it. Make sure your priceless heirlooms and other treasures have evacuated the premises — that means jewelry, breakable antiques, crystal, precious toys, and anything else that you either a) do not want touched or broken; or b) do not want displayed to the world.
Walk through your house from the front porch as if you were a potential buyer and fix what pops to the eye as you enter each room. Be critical. Believe me — buyers will.
Your Home & Color Coach 
I’ve found that the best way to really ‘see’ your clutter and what looks off is to photograph your home (just you, not professionally) and look at the photos. It helps pinpoint the problems and give you plan of action. It is sort of like only seeing the spelling and grammatical errors after printing on paper.
Thanks for the great tips!
You are absolutely right about photographing the house and all the rooms to spot the problems. Works like a charm. How often do we walk over stuff we don’t even see in our own homes…