Home Staging Tips – How to Prepare and Sell Your Hawaii Home Fast

As a professional Realtor and a Professional Home Stager, I spend a great deal of time reviewing the current market, what’s selling, what isn’t, and how can I improve the looks of the product I am selling (your home). I read countless articles on home staging, network with other stagers, and buy new furnishings on a weekly basis (spent a little over $3,000 just last month). 

Today’s market demands that your product be the best looking one on the market if you want to get top dollar. If you don’t want to do some work on your home and have it properly staged (stagers may easily charge anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to fully stage a home), then just reduce the price to attract buyers. If it doesn’t look great the buyers will reduce the price for you, if they even choose to make an offer.

If you agree that your product has to look better than the other products out there, then you have come to the right place. We know how to create “Buyer Bait” and once they walk into your product we know we have them. Here are just a few tips to get you started. When you want a complete analysis of your product and how to make it the best looking one on the market, please call me for a free, no obligation, consultation. Let’s begin.

5 Tips to Make Your Home the Best Looking One on the Market

1. The exterior and entrance speak volumes of what is inside — It is ALL about first impressions and they have never been more important in your life. The exterior of your home MUST look well groomed and clean. Mow the grass, trim the hedges, power wash the sidewalk and driveway, repaint or replace the mailbox, replace your outside light fixture, and put nice address numbers on the home. Place some seasonal flowering plants at the entrance to the home and consider new hardware for the door. A great, low cost coat of high gloss paint on the door (in a very specific color — call me for the color) can make a tremendous difference. Add to that a nice Brass Kick Plate at the bottom and it’s like putting a bracelet on your door.

2. The entrance will set the tone for your entire home. What do you see when you walk in? Is it clean, neat, and uncluttered? If you have a foyer, consider a small table with a small plant as you walk in the door. If the entrance is directly into your living room it is SOOOO important that you have the furniture properly placed and use a “vignette” to focus the buyer’s eyes and create a feeling of warmth. Follow the “rule of three”. The human brain is wired to be able to wrap itself easily around concepts, phrases, and visual elements that come in threes (“location, location, location” is a good example). When staging, creating vignettes in groups of threes is the fastest and easiest way to present a visually appealing “concept” for a room.

3. Float your furniture – If your couches and chairs are clinging to the walls, you are not alone. It is a common decorating mistake and theoretically is done to create the feel of “more space”. It does not do that. It is better to position furniture into cozy conversational groups, and so important to take a look at the traffic flow of the room. Professional stagers commonly refer to envisioning a figure-eight with clear pathways around it. This will show the obvious traffic patterns and will open up the room and make it seem larger.

4. Consider paint — Nothing gives you more bang for the buck than paint. It is relatively inexpensive and you can do it yourself in 2 to 3 days. Don’t get stuck painting everything “neutral” as in beige and white (don’t go to the other extreme and GO PURPLE). There are many “neutral” colors that will enhance the appearance of your room tremendously, and that is where I can help when you call for a FREE consultation. My redesign expert and I have painted almost every color in the book at one time or another and we know what works (and what doesn’t). Before you spend a great deal of time painting it the wrong color (remember, it is not what you like, it is what will appeal to the buying public), let us help you (for free). TIP: make sure you paint your trim in a nice high gloss accent color, which may be white, but could also be something else!

5. Storage — Okay, you finally made the big decision to sell your home, and it is now a product. We already know it has to be the best looking product, but where do you start? As you are selling, that means you will be moving out (and when you list with me you will be moving out very soon). We don’t put your home on the market and then pack when it sells! We pack first (or at least do most of the packing). You have lived in your home a number of years and have accumulated a TON of stuff. The first step is to sort it. One pile for the dump, one pile for the garage sale, one pile for your favorite charity, and a pile for the stuff you want to have at your new home. We recommend renting a PODS (Portable On Demand Storage). Box up everything that you want to keep and have in your new home, and store it in your POD. This includes excess clothing (closets always look bigger with less clothes), books, excess dishes, Christmas stuff; everything that you do not need in the next 60 days (shouldn’t take longer than that to sell if it is listed with us). Additionally, when we stage your home (for FREE) we may want to bring in some of our furniture and remove some of yours. The furniture, pictures, accent pieces, etc. that we remove are stored in the POD. Now we can get to work making the product (your home) the best looking one on the market.

This is only a few suggestions on preparing your Hawaii home (product) for sale and we have many more. We sell homes (and always stage them) for a living and we know what works. While other Realtors may say they will “stage” your home, none (at least that I know of) has over $140,000 in furnishings to do the job. Call for your FREE CONSULTATION and let me help you turn your home into “Buyer Bait.”