MOVING LINKS 4 YOU

Staging your home helps buyers think!

Imagine. You walk into a beautiful home but it is so filled-to-the-gills with the owner’s life that it’s hard to imagine your own things in the home. You THINK you could live there but cannot see past their family portraits, kids’ toys and refrigerator filled with magnets and children’s artwork. 

Everyday wear and tear on our home. We last moved in 2005. That was when we sold the home we had lived in for the previous 9 years while raising our sons from boys to young men. Oh, how I loved that house with its spacious rooms, woodwork, Pella windows, industrial stove, great acreage, and the memories.

Getting up to speed. Having owned a real estate company for years, my husband and I knew it was going to take some elbow grease to get our home up to speed. It had seen some wear and tear because we had settled in and LIVED there. We painted and re-carpeted and got everything working again that we’d put on the back burner. We packed away personal effects that we felt might keep people previewing our home from being able to imagine their OWN things in what they were considering to be THEIR new home. That’s hard to do but critical. (Do you know how hard it is to pack away beloved art work? It is but it’s a must.)

Fell in love with our own home again. You could say I fell in love with our home all over again. It looked magnificent. How could we leave it? That told me we’d done our job well. It looked even better than when we’d purchased it. And it looked great then! We wanted to turn it on for each potential buyer that  might come along!

Market ready! We had an open house or two when a buyer appeared with their Realtor and presented an offer. We did a little negotiating and signed the paperwork. I have to admit it felt like it happened too fast and too easily. I wondered if we had set the price too low because it sold so quickly. I’d learned a long time ago that the first few weeks a home is on the market are the most critical. It’s smart to price right to get every buyer’s attention who is looking for what you are selling. When homes are on the market very long, they get stale and people start wondering what’s wrong. I was reminded about all this and calmed down.

Who will YOUR buyer be? We learned later that the family purchasing our home had been looking in our area for two years. They absolutely knew what they were looking for but hadn’t seen it.  When they walked into our home, just as it had happened to us, they knew immediately “this was the one!”  Had we held out for more money, we might have lost out completely. They may have been the only buyers out there. We’ll ever know. After a little thought, we felt it was a sweet deal for them and for us.

Again, staging your home is critical to capture any potential buyer’s hearts and imaginations. Here are some good tips from the HOME STAGING CHANNEL. One more link, helpful for decluttering ideas, is from the New York Times.

If you have any home staging tips to add, they are welcome in the comments. Thanks!

Contact me: Mary Lascelles | ReloMary with your questions regarding selling / buying / moving / relocating anywhere in the U.S. Networks are in place to match you usually within 24 hours with the professionals you’ll need to get the job done right. Ph.  530.515.6299 | relomary@gmail.com