The best tip that I can give a homeowner who is interested in selling their home is to first hire a professional Home Stager to give you a consultation. By professional, I don’t mean someone with a flair for decorating or someone who thinks they learned Home Staging from watching HGTV. An Accredited Staging Professional® has invested in specialized education and their goal should be to provide sellers with the best possible service. Carolina Spaces offers nationwide assistance with finding a qualified ASP®.
A professional can be expected to evaluate your property with a trained eye and focus on things that would be a distraction to buyers. The Home Stager’s job during a consultation is to make educated recommendations for changing, rearranging, removing, adding, packing, storing, and possibly painting and updating. After the consultation, the homeowner is expected to complete the recommendations prior to listing the home for sale for the best and fastest results.
Once the homeowner has the staging recommendations, he/she might need some organizational help with sorting and packing belongings. The homeowner might also need a moving team and truck to haul excess items to a donation site or a storage facility. A larger-scale professional Home Staging company should be able to assist with these needs at an added cost.
Beyond the common tips of - “reduce clutter, remove personalized items, and keep your home clean and odor-free”- exists the specialized knowledge of furniture placement most beneficial to traffic flow and highlighting each room’s features. This is crucial to prepare a home for showing and it is rare for a homeowner with an emotional attachment to their home to complete their own staging project without professional assistance.