You know that kitchens and bathrooms sell houses, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore other parts of a house when it comes to staging it to sell. One of the most neglected yet biggest selling features of a home is the garage.

Many homeowners think they can simply close the garage door when they put their house on the market and hope potential buyers won’t notice the clutter or hope they will forgive the mess. But, because home staging is about helping a buyer make an emotional connection to a home, you can’t allow your clients to take lazy shortcuts and hope for the best.

A garage can be a huge selling feature of a property but most garages are kept in a constant state of disorder. Because your goal as a home stager is to have a buyer imagine their life in a home, you can’t ask them to see past clutter because many won’t be able to.

• The first step for staging a garage is to remove all clutter. Help the homeowners to purge and ask them to get rid of anything that doesn’t have to be there. Advise them to donate unwanted items to charity and put any seasonal items they won’t use while the house is listed should be put in storage.

• For items that do need to be kept, put a pegboard up to get tools off of surfaces and make sure there are no piles of clutter on the floor.

• The homeowners can keep their lawnmower, bicycles and paint cans in the garage but make sure they’re organized.

• If it’s been awhile since the garage saw a fresh coat of paint, now’s the time to freshen it up – that goes for walls and the floor.

Watch the video related to home staging tips

Start Your Home Staging and Redesign Business www.decorate-redecorate.com NOW ANYONE CAN START A HOME STAGING AND REDESIGN BUSINESS at Decorate-Redecorate.Com. Courses, books, sales aids, tools, resources, certification, directories, tips. Earn $75-$300 an hour staging and redesigning homes. Visit www.decorate-redecorate.com and www.homestaging4profit.com for more information. Copyright Barbara Jennings, Decorate-Redecorate.com, 2009

Help answer the question about home staging tips

About Author

Debra Gould -
About the Author:

For more home staging tips, check out Debra Gould’s Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home Staging Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans. It teaches you how to stage every space in a home and it contains tons of photographs from The Staging Diva®’s own home staging projects and even floor plans to help give you some inspiration.

Articles on home staging or how to decorate a house to sell quickly in a slow real estate market often focus on de-cluttering and neutralizing (unfortunately, often to the point of blandness). There is also much talk of the importance of kitchens and bathrooms, but bedrooms are important too.

The right touches can take a sad room that would never stick in a buyers mind to one that is memorable and says “wow!”

Whether you’re staging a master bedroom, guest bedroom, or child’s room, the bed should be treated as a focal point. Dress it up with an attractive duvet, shams and decorative pillows. I generally get paid for my time to shop for these for a client. We use these items to stage the room they’re selling, and then they get to enjoy them in their new space.

In a master or guest room, if a queen-sized bed makes the room look small, use a double bed instead. Then add one or two night stands of equal height with matching lamps.

Visitors should have a sense of space when they enter the room, so make sure the dresser isn’t too close to the door. Consider also whether some well-placed art might warm up the space.

In some cases, to make the room look larger it’s best to place the head of the bed under a window. When you do this, make sure the window treatments pull everything together.

The image in this article was provided by Staging Diva Graduate Jayne Steuart of Pearl Home Staging and Redesign LLC. She did an outstanding job transforming this 182 square foot bedroom with furniture the home seller already had, color and well-chosen accessories.

Watch the video related to home staging tips

Home Staging is a “hot” buzz word in real estate these days and it can mean anything from painting, minor repairs to renting furniture. Expert Interior Design and Accredited Home Stager Cathy Hobbs shares some of her “Tips of The Trade” when it comes to Home Staging. For more of Cathy Hobbs Expert Design Tips, be sure to check out www.design–recipes.com.

Help answer the question about home staging tips

About Author

Debra Gould -
About the Author:

For more tips to staging bedrooms and any room in a house, check out the Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home Staging Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans. It includes design ideas for every room and boosting curb appeal too. Plus you’ll find sections on soothing the nervous client, how to differentiate a house from the competition, identifying the home’s target market, communicating your vision and more.

When staging a house to sell, you can’t just ignore a room because it presents a staging challenge, or because you don’t think it would be as important as staging the kitchen or bathroom.

The goal of home staging is to have a buyer make a strong emotional connection with a property and who’s to say their dream isn’t to have a study in the attic or a craft room in the basement?

Your job is to make the property you’ve been hired to stage appeal to as many people as possible. This means you have to pay careful attention to every room of a house because you can’t assume nobody will care what the basement, garage or attic looks like.

If you have a usable attic to work with when you’re staging a house, show buyers how much storage they’ll have when they buy the property. Don’t let the homeowners cram all of their stuff up there to hideit while the house is on the market. Have them move their things into storage and / or donate unused items to charity instead.

• Get piles of stuff off the floor and tucked away neatly in closets and cupboards.

• Repaint the walls if needed.

• If there’s a dusty old carpet on the floor, suggest replacing it with laminate.

• Add lighting so it’s as bright as possible.

All of these decorating tips will go a long way towards creating an attractive and usable space in the attic of a home you’re staging.

Watch the video related to home staging tips

Stage your living to attract homebuyers. Living Room’s are often the first space that a homebuyer views when walking through the front door. First impressions are crucial when selling your home. Start with a blank canvas and start removing everything from the area. Position furniture in a way that shows off the living room’s potential. Maximize space by removing un-used furniture and decor. Add tasteful accessories and artwork that are neutral in color and design. Wow the buyer with your newly staged living room.

Help answer the question about home staging tips

About Author

Debra Gould -
About the Author:

If you’d like more home staging design tips, you should check out the Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home Staging Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans written by Debra Gould. It covers every single space of a home and offers advice along with my own before and after photos and floor plans for reference.

There are so many small things home stagers can do to a property that will dramatically shorten the time it spends on the real estate market while increasing the final sales price for home sellers.

Here are my five favorite home staging tips, so you can help each property you stage sell faster and for more money:

1. Reduce drive-bys

Imagine you’re on a home hunting mission. Your real estate agent has ten properties to show you on a Saturday afternoon. When you drive up to what could be your dream home, you see a rusted-out mailbox, broken handrail and children’s toys strewn across the lawn which hasn’t seen a lawn mower in weeks. You’re probably going to say, “Um, no thanks, let’s move on.”

Curb appeal is so important. If the outside of a house looks like this, a potential buyer is going to think nobody cares about it. You should make sure, no matter what, that lawns are freshly cut, leaves are raked or snow shoveled from the driveway. A potted or hanging plant can make a big difference near the entrance. Repair or replace any obvious defects, often this is cheaper to do than a prospective buyer will imagine. Make sure the walk ways and porches are swept clean and garbage and recycling containers are tucked away at the rear of the house or in the garage. Make sure the exterior gets a good pressure wash and the decks are scrubbed clean. It’s a good alternative to painting and once everything’s clean you might see it doesn’t need to be repainted at all – perhaps just a touch up will do.

2. One man’s junk is not necessarily another man’s treasure, it may be their reason not to buy the house

De-cluttering is essential. Tackle one area at a time so the task isn’t so overwhelming. If you’re doing this with your client, make sure they look at each item carefully before deciding whether it’s to keep or to toss. Each closet will probably have to be gone through more than once to get its contents down to the absolute essentials, but it will be worth it. If the home owner is having a tough time parting with things, recommend they rent a storage locker so they can keep their beloved items, just remove them from the house they’re selling. They’ll have to move it eventually anyway!

3. Avoid wandering eyes

You want to make sure there are no little problems in a room that will have a potential buyer looking from one flaw to another thinking about they work they’ll have to do. You want them to see the bigger picture and imagine themselves living there. For example, do a walkthrough and look for chipped paint on the door frames. These can be filled in with “white out”. Old nail holes can often be hidden behind strategically hung art, but don’t just throw things on the wall where the old nail was (see point 5). Peeling wallpaper should be glued back down. Make sure there are covers on all electrical outlets and light switches, and replace any that are cracked. These little things make a big difference!

4. Color is your friend when it’s time to sell a house

If you have to repaint a home’s interior, or some rooms in a home, try to choose a pleasing color palette that allows each room to flow nicely into the next. All colors should go together. Try to repeat one signature color throughout a home. Maybe it’s the feature color in one room used as an accent in the others, through accessories or throw cushions.

5. Make a big impact with a little art

By strategically using art, you can enhance a home’s perceived value, draw the eye away from tiny flaws, give an otherwise uninteresting space a focal point and replace personal memorabilia.

Position art at eye level and use pieces that are appropriate to the size of the wall. Art with a large frame on a small wall can make the entire area seem smaller. Avoid religious art, or anything edgy that could be offensive to some potential buyers. (For more tips about using art for home staging, visit Staging Diva Art Shop.)

These are only five of dozens of tips that can improve your next home staging project. Check out Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home Staging Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans – an essential guide for every home stager. It’s full of home staging design tips and tricks (as the title suggests) and they’re all brought to life with before and after photos and sample floor plans from my own home staging projects.

Watch the video related to home staging tips

Stage your living to attract homebuyers. Living Room’s are often the first space that a homebuyer views when walking through the front door. First impressions are crucial when selling your home. Start with a blank canvas and start removing everything from the area. Position furniture in a way that shows off the living room’s potential. Maximize space by removing un-used furniture and decor. Add tasteful accessories and artwork that are neutral in color and design. Wow the buyer with your newly staged living room.

Help answer the question about home staging tips

About Author

Debra Gould -
About the Author:

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®, knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 1000 others to do the same. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.<