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.

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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

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Debra Gould -
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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.

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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.

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Debra Gould -
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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.

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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.

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Debra Gould -
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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.

When it comes to rooms that are neglected in home staging, the laundry room often makes the list, especially if it’s part of an unfinished basement.

Because home staging is about romancing buyers when trying to sell a home, it’s important to get rid of any scary areas and that includes basement laundry areas.

If the laundry area is in the dark corner of an unfinished basement, a buyer might think, “I have to do two loads a day, and I’m supposed to do it in this creepy space? Forget it!” However, if the laundry room is bright, clean and even minimally decorated, the same buyer won’t be using this as a reason not to buy the house.

And in today’s slow real estate market, sellers can’t afford to give a prospective buyer any reason to hesitate.

You don’t have to go crazy with the design of the laundry room – it should be kept minimalist, brightly lit, clean and functional.

Here are some home staging tips for the laundry room:

• Discard or store off-site anything that does not have to part of the laundry area. This should not be a dumping ground for unused items

• Easily brighten up the laundry area with a coat of paint and additional lighting. Even an unfinished basement looks better when the concrete floor is painted and there are no dark scary corners.

• Put detergent and other laundering supplies in cupboards or attractive canisters or baskets.

• If there’s a window with a drab view, hide it with a curtain or a nice blind that is light enough to allow some light to pass through it.

With just a small amount of effort, you can transform even the dullest laundry room into a beautiful space and that can go a long way towards helping a prospective buyer imagining their life in the home you’re staging.

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Lisa Heindel Keller Williams Realty Crescent City Westbank Partners LLC westbankliving.com Getting your house ready to sell can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Just keep in mind that you’re wanting potential buyers to be able to see their own family and possessions in your home. In order to do that, your home must have more "blank areas" than usual to allow buyers to imagine their things in your space. Since you’re going to be packing for your move anyway, go ahead and get a start on it now. Box up out of season clothes to make closets seem more spacious. Remove family photos so buyers don’t feel the house is already "taken". Give them opportunities to visually place their possessions by having less of your own spread around the house. Allow your house to still feel comfortable, but never crowded or cluttered. If you need specific advice, I would be happy to help you prepare your home for sale. Please call (504) 616-6262 or email lisa@westbankliving.com.

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Debra Gould -
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If you found this advice useful, you should read Debra Gould’s Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home Staging Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans. Written for home stagers, it’s full of this same type of home staging advice and covers room in a home.