5 home staging tips to get ready for the spring real estate market

Hey there, home seller. Welcome to the Creative Home Staging Show. Come on in. Come in. Come in.

Hey. My name is Kasia. And in this show, we talk about home staging for home sellers. If you are getting ready to sell your house soon, you are in the right place. We cover home staging tips, strategies to help make it easier on you, and ways to influence buyers.

So roll up your sleeves, get a notebook and pen handy. Yes. I do things the old fashioned way, and let’s get your house ready to sell. Hey there, home sellers. Welcome to another creative home staging show.

I am your host, Kasha McDaniel. And today, we are talking about the five things that you can do to get ready for the spring real estate market. And I’m excited to share these with you because there’s some things that you can actually do very easily and quickly that shouldn’t cost too much money, but it does take some effort just to get your home ready to sell. So let’s dive into this episode. So first of all, we’re gonna start with let me make myself a little bit smaller here.

We’re gonna talk about fixing your curb appeal. That is a number one tip that I have for you because is your curb appeal is the first thing that home buyers see when they come to your home. So you wanna make sure it doesn’t have trash cans in the front, that the bushes aren’t covering up the front door, they’re not overgrown. You wanna take a look at your flower beds. Is your lawn is cut?

Make sure you take a look at your curb appeal so that you make a great first impression because that’s what it’s all about. Right? And you can easily do that, by just keeping up with the, curb appeal and, you know, cutting that grass, trimming that, you know, going to make sure that the bushes aren’t covering windows, things like that. So let me share with you an example of before picture here. These bushes were covering up the windows partially.

They were just kind of an eyesore. This chair really wasn’t the greatest. So what we ended up doing is, basically taking out those big ugly bushes, replacing them with some smaller, prettier flowering things, and made it more inviting with some, chairs in the front, have some pillows. We could have gone a whole lot more, but this was just enough to get the curb appeal to get someone to come to the front door and say, hey. This is a great spot just to be sitting right here.

K? The next thing that I have tip for you I have is cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. That’s the easiest thing you can do, and that means inside and outside. So we talked about the curb appeal in the yard. Right?

But also I’m talking about the dirty dishes, the bathrooms. Make sure there’s no yucky grime in the sink and and things like that, the dishes haven’t put out, that the showers have been cleaned. So there’s easy things that you can do to help you, make a great impression also with just cleaning the house. Okay? And this is another example of before and after picture.

This deck was kinda grimy, kinda dark and dirty and dingy, and all we ended up doing was just power washing it. We got some new pillow cushions in here, but, really, this deck looked so much better just with power washing it. Okay? It was a simple, easy fix that you can do just to make it look so much better. You need more staging hips?

I do have a home staging tips membership where you can post your questions, and we can figure out what it is that you need help with. Maybe you need some weekly home staging tips, I provide those as well. During this, membership, you also, get to download a staging timeline, and we meet live once a month to answer any questions you may have. You can go to bit.ly/stagingsquad to join the membership. Alright.

Tip number three is decluttering. This is a big one. You gotta go through each room and basically decide what needs to stay, what you can donate, what can be sold, or just needs to go to the trash. Right? So definitely decluttering is a big thing that you can do and the easiest thing that you can do to help you sell your house.

Okay. Here’s an example of decluttering. We there was a lot of stuff in this dining room. These pots were taken out of the kitchen cabinet because they were painting the cabinets, so there’s a little more clutter than normal. But there was a lot of books in here going around, so ended up basically cleaning this out, taking out the bookshelves, putting them in a different room, and actually showing it as a dining room.

Nice and simple. The chairs, were put there as you can see how big of a table you can put there. You had a nice little credenza over here. You couldn’t really tell it because there were just so many other things that were distracting you. So this is a great way to declutter and show what it could possibly look like.

And so the homeowner or home seller home buyer, sorry, home buyer can imagine themselves eating in this dining room. Another decluttering, before and after here. I wanna show you this was an office. There’s just a lot of stuff going on in here. Too many things, too many desks, and we ended up just taking out the one desk.

I think they end up donating it to, and so basically reused some furniture, moved things around in here, and showed the space as it could be. Okay? Another tip for you is basically brightening brightening up the space. This is a really dark room. If when you’re taking pictures, when you’re getting your household, you wanna make sure that all the lights are on, the blinds are open, or the curtains are drawn.

Everything’s kinda pushed back and opened up so that you can see. This is not, you know, meant to look like a cave. That’s not what your home is. Right? You may like it dark, but when it comes time for pictures, you wanna show how open and bright the space is.

And this is kind of what we did just kinda show you. The lights are on. We kind of cleaned it up a little bit in here, moved some things out, and, yeah, the dog’s not in the picture either. But you can see this is a great space. They have a a piano in here.

It could be something else in there. It could be a dining room, in here as well. So these are just some options of when you’re decluttering and cleaning up, this is what it can do and actually brightening up the space. And then the last tip I have for you is neutralizing the color. There’s a lot of times that you have loved your home and loved painting the rooms a different color, but now when it comes to time to sell it, I would highly recommend neutralizing the color.

And here, this is just a little bit too bright. I’ll show you the after picture in just a minute. But this one, again, there’s too many colors going. One one wall here is blue and the next one is green. There’s just too many things.

We just neutralized it in here and gave it another, you know just made it more user friendly, basically, because then the, buyers can imagine, okay. Well, I can fit this table in here, and I don’t have to worry about matching the color on the wall. Right? Because the neutral color will let you use whatever furniture you have. Maybe you have a blue table, maybe it’s a green one, but the neutral color will go better within this multicolored thing going on here.

And then this is so this is the the red kitchen that I showed you before. This is the now neutral color we actually picked the color kind of from the countertops here because you countertops kinda got lost you couldn’t realize oh that’s granite right there, and that’s the color to kinda help neutralize it and make it look feel bigger too. With the lighter color, it actually makes the space look and feel bigger. Okay? So these tips are meant to help you, so please don’t be offended when it comes time to sell your house.

The Home Stager and the real estate agent are working to help you get the best price for your home and looking out for your best interest. So they know what it takes to help sell a house, and these changes are only temporary. You’re gonna be just moving things, probably removing things, changing things around. And, again, it’s only a temporary thing. You’ll get your stuff back, the ones that you wanna take with you to your next house.

So just try not to be offended, and I hope these five tips are something that you can get started on right away to help you get ready for the spring real estate market. I hope you guys have a fantastic week, and we’ll talk to you later. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Creative Home Staging Show. I hope you got some good tips in this episode, and I hope you come back and listen for more. If you wanna connect and want to take action, there are some ways you can stay connected with us.

Number one, you can watch this episode on my YouTube channel at Blue Diamond Staging and Design to get more visuals. I like to share some short videos there as well, so take a look at my channel there. Number two, you can also leave a review. Your feedback helps this show grow. You can go to the show and tap the three vertical dots to open a menu and hit rate the show.

Number three, you can also find custom playlists from older home staging episodes that I called home staging do’s and don’ts, as well as free home staging playlists for those of you who are new to home staging. And number four, if you have any questions about today’s episode or need some home staging advice, you can go to bluediamondstaginganddesign.com forward slash chat and contact me via email or call me. I hope that this podcast is just a way for you to get to know me and how I can help you. Remember, you can do this, and staging is temporary. Keep up the good work, and I can’t wait to connect with you more.