If you’re considering putting your home up for sale, it’s essential you stage it correctly in order to create a “wow” effect for potential buyers. Staging typically requires a thorough inspection of each room and the exterior and generally involves crafting each room to look like it’s brand new.
A common misconception about home staging is that it’s limited to cleaning. While cleaning is an essential and hugely significant part of the staging process, the process additionally requires depersonalizing and crafting rooms in a way that potential buyers can envision their lives in the home.
Using a home staging checklist is an excellent way to ensure you’re checking all the boxes in each room. There are numerous home staging checklists available online, but you can also create one in a few simple steps. Stay with us as we break down the process of identifying the changes you need to make to your home when getting it ready for show.
Put Yourself in the Buyer’s Shows
One of the best ways to determine the changes you need to make to your home is by pretending to be the buyer. In order to do this, imagine you’re a potential buyer and walk through each room in the home asking yourself: “What about this room would I dislike if I were the buyer?” The answers to these questions will give you insight into the home buying process and largely dictate your home staging checklist.
This exercise should allow you to notice things beyond dirty countertops and smudges on mirrors. You may find you need to adjust furniture to improve traffic flow, or you need to get your doorbell fixed. Doing a full walkthrough with the mindset of the buyer is a great way to create a list of improvements.
Depersonalize Each Room
If you lived in your home for a number of years, it’s likely your walls and shelves are filled with pictures and memories from past experiences you’ve had. When staging, however, it’s crucial to depersonalize each room so potential buyers can see what can be done with the home — not what already has been done.
Depersonalizing doesn’t mean totally ridding the walls and shelves of any pictures or decorations. Rather, when you stage, populate the home with purely decorative and neutral items. Buyers don’t want to see a barren home, but they don’t want to see it completely personalized either.
Make a List of Repairs
Cracks in the wall and leaky faucets can be a difference maker for a buyer when it comes to selling a house. Even if they aren’t big fixes, needed repairs can give potential buyers the wrong impression of the home when they tour.
When you do the walkthrough of your home, keep a running list of repairs that need to be made and ensure you give yourself enough time to get them fixed before you show the home. While you may think you can tackle these repairs yourself, it’s often best to bring in a contractor to ensure that the best work possible is being done.
Create your checklist
With these tips, you should be able to put together a rather extensive checklist of changes to make to the home prior to showing. It’s often best to break the down the checklist by room to make sure you’re not leaving any room unaccounted for.
Like we said, there are many checklists that already exist to help you get started. Here’s one from Angi that breaks down changes to make to each room when you’re staging.
