🏠What Sellers Don't Understand About Staging + 3 Most Important Staging Tips

Thank you for watching!! **Please Note: I am a licensed Realtor in Minnesota & Wisconsin with Berkshire Hathaway Homeservices North Properties. This video is not intended to solicit anyone who is currently working with a real estate professional. This video represents our experience, but may not apply to all homes or locations, please check with a real estate professional who is familiar with your specific market before implementing.**

I worked in a retail store that carried furnishing, pillows and other home decor including dishes. Nothing was more annoying, then selling lots of items to a home designer/stager, knowing full well that it was all going to be returned “USED.” Please don’t do this, it is not fun for the retail workers, the cashiers not to mention, the floor staff who have to return these items to the floor insuring they are clean, repackaged in a sellable manner and then to find space for the returned items. As we sell items in the store, the holes created by product that has been sold, must be filled with new stock. If products are returned, the floor staff must find new homes for theses items. It is a lot of unnecessary work for the retail staff. Please hire a professional stager, who has a warehouse of household items for staging homes.

We moved 50-75% of our stuff into storage prior to putting our house up for sale. Our house looked so beautiful we decided not to sell it after all! That's how we found out what we can live without & don't want or need any more. Now we have a lot of stuff in storage to go through & get rid of. We're accidental minialists.

My husband and I were house shopping this year, and the biggest shock to me was that some people didn't clean up at all! These people were not hoarders, but they had very dirty houses, and I was simply baffled that they would try to sell it like that.

My house was staged and I hired professional cleaners, sold in 2 days, $10 K over asking. I had to buy new curtains, mine were too short, new pillows and bedding. I also filled holes and painted, my choice. My garage was full of packed boxes, but the inside of the house looked great. Freshly cut grass and new mulch, too. It was worth it!

Getting items out and into temporary storage is key. When buyers open cupboards and closets you want them to feel spacious so only a few things in there. I removed upholstered chairs from the TV room. Take out hutches, bookcases, etc. You're going to be moving them anyway. When we sold our house a realtor for the buyer asked "Where is the family living while they're selling?" :)

I moved after 45 yrs and had a LOT of stuff. My attitude was I didn't want to do ANY prep to sell but came around when the realtor offered a staging adviser. Everything I owned was moved except what we kept for staging, which was minimal. Several doors were changed, new carpet upstairs, painted the bath & most all of the window trim. She even suggested removing all the curtains so I did and had a service power wash the outside & clean all the windows. It still didn't sell "fast" but I'm sure I did better than if I had gone with "as is"!

I feel like a decluttered house isn't just easier to "see yourself" in, but there is another aspect that nobody is talking about. A clean, calm home tells something about the sellers and what kind of intentional care they probably put into their home when they lived there. Which is why a dirty cluttered house sends buyers "running the other way" as some of the above comments mentioned.

I staged my Mother in laws house, it was a real Granny house. We spent £2000 to update it, I did a lot of emulsion painting and we even replaced the very dated carpet with neutral ones. Some people told me we were going way over the top but it sold quickly and for more than other houses in the road so it was all worth it! I love staging houses!

More tips: make sure that the baseboards are surgically cleaned/scrubbed! Paint a nice white if needed along with door frames. Update door handles if they are older styles and replace the handles on the kitchen cabinets as well to a modern set. Use chalk paint on the kitchen cabinets if you want to update the color. Ensure that all electrical outlets are the same colour with no cracks and properly do the caulking in the kitchen and bathrooms. These are very simple things that anyone can do with little to no experience and by watching YouTube videos.

I would also add "Clean your house"!! Like a REALLY GOOD deep clean. It seems like common sense, but I can't tell you how many houses we went into that were so gross :-(

I decluttered ruthlessly, depersonalized and cleaned properly...and “staged” to the best of my ability..I put myself in the buyers shoes...our house sold in 5 days!!! Multiple offers...we had back to back showings for the weekend and got to cancel them, because the house sold before the weekend!!!!🎉 I used bedding and towels I already owned in light colors or white..no dark colors..our agent said we made it so easy for him.😁 We don’t have pets, but I would suggest remove all traces of pets In the house...including odors.

I’ve done my own staging. I decided on a theme for my aunts condo near the water. Went to second hand stores and purchased everything I felt I needed to make it inviting. Sold her condo after the open house. Then I did the staging for our house. Used inflatable mattress for the beds and reused the items from my aunts condo. Staged both places for less than $200.00. House also sold after open house. Anyone can stage their own place. Also do curb appeal because that is the first thing buyers see before entering the home.

Staging and cleaning is everything with selling a home. Last year I sold my 50 yr old California condo, and took the cleaning, painting, simplifying every space, and staging (I did it myself) very seriously. We got rid of 60% of what we owned. I got nothing but praise for all I did. I was selling during the Fall and winter so I always had plenty of lighting day and night, and my wax warmer was always on with cinnamon wax melts, which was the first thing visitors always noticed. My home was scrubbed shiny clean, and I had a few well placed seasonal decor items around. I kept new white towels out specifically for viewings, and staged the outside of my home as well., including the patio (that I staged to look like a living room with lamps, and a rug, furniture, tables etc. ) And the landscaping at the front of the home was fresh and inviting. My bedroom closet had just a few items in it and even those were hung in the colors of the rainbow, all on the same white hangers. I had battery candles inside and out. It cost me under $300 to buy fresh new things to stage my home after I painted each room, decluttered, and brought the entire home down to its simplest, form, while still feeling warm and cozy. Putting in the extra effort to show your home at its very best at all times is well worth the effort. I got my full asking price, with no problem.

Great tips! As a former realtor, I always suggested that home sellers pay a home inspector to pre-inspect the home so they can make any necessary repairs and avoid unnecessary negotiations. Buyers often estimate repairs high resulting in reduced offers. Having a current inspection report with all repairs dated and warranties available was a great selling point.

Best explanation of why staging works. Our home didn't sell until it was staged and I didn't understand why until now. Thank you.

Hi Dawn, I came across your channel when I was about to put my house on the market and I found this video to be SO helpful! Funny thing was, once I had decluttered and lived like that for 6 weeks, I did NOT want to bring any of that stuff back into my house again! Then I Googled how to cook at home more and I came across your video about meal planning. I didn’t even click that it was the same channel that I’d already watched before. Again, I found it to be SO helpful and it has transformed our eating habits! Then I realised that it was you again and now I’m totally hooked on your channel and minimalism! You talk about how you have a small house; well, here in New Zealand our houses are generally much smaller, so our family of 5 lives in an 80 square metre house (860 square feet). Minimalism is very important when you don’t have much space! Thank you for all of your advice. I felt like one of those people drowning in day-to-day life stuff, and now I am starting to be able to breathe again. You really are transforming my life. Love your minimalist videos too - you clearly explain your points without unnecessary word clutter! Thank you, thank you, thank you 😊

We did the same with our home ten years ago, and had a beautiful yard and curb appeal. We staged our screened in porch with a wine fridge full of fancy beer, the tv on baseball, and an empty garage with fresh paint, and a beautiful (painted with special enamel floor paint ) garage floor. We also had a videographer and photographer for the virtual tour online. After two days and a bidding war, we sold for 15,000 over asking. The buyers were thousands of miles away.

I staged the last home I sold. I kept all the new stuff I bought. It's great to have nice new linens and decor in a new home.

Those are a lot of great tips. It's really hard to make suggestions about decluttering and depersonalizing especially when the sellers are older and have lived in the home for a long period of time. Their house and everything in it is a part of them, so you have to be uber diplomatic about asking them to pack up certain items like family photos or especially their collections (figurines, dolls, beanie babies) and ask that they put them away. I have had to play psychologist with people on occasion and point out that they've put the house on the market because they don't want to or can't live there anymore and that eventually when the house sells, they'll have to pack all their things up anyway. Even in homes with the tackiest décor, I've had to tread lightly and explain that my suggestions are not a criticism of the things they love, but if their home appeals to a broader range of buyers that maybe don't share their sense of style then there's a better chance of selling their home and selling it quickly. I find it helpful to keep coming around to that point--"you don't want to live here anymore, you want to sell this house."