3 Home Staging Tips

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Are you selling your home? As a seller, one of the best steps you can take to generate some interest in your property is through home staging. This is the process of prepping your home in a way that makes it more visually appealing to buyers. Today, most homebuyers look at pictures of a for-sale home online before going to see it. Because this is the case, you want to ensure that your home presents well to help draw people to your open houses and schedule a visit. The more people that you can get through your doors, the higher the likelihood you have of selling your home. Continue reading and discover a few tips on how to stage your home, so it flys off the market.

No personalizations

Most people like putting their personal touches on their homes. This includes personal items like family pictures, as well as keepsakes from weddings and vacations. When it comes time to stage your home, it is in your best interest to remove all personalizations. Interested buyers are going to be less excited to walk through a home that features pictures of the current homeowners' family and friends. In a way, you want to give them more of a blank canvas so they can envision themselves moving into the home.

No signs of pets

One of your first steps a homeowner should take when you begin staging your home is to rid your home of all signs of pets. While you may be proud of the fact that your dog is your best friend, you need to accept the fact that some of your potential buyers may not like dogs. It is also possible that some of them may have an allergy that could make their visit to your home an unpleasant experience. With this, be sure to remove all pets, toys, water dishes, pet food, etc. Also, clean it thoroughly to remove all pet hair and consider deep cleaning to remove pet odors.

No clutter

Home sellers need to know that clutter makes a home appear smaller. When staging a home, you want to rid your home of any personal items that are just taking up space. Many home sellers make the mistake of shoving these items in their basements, garages, or closets. You want to avoid doing this because homebuyers will look at all parts of a home. You have to expect to check these kinds of places, so its best to remove clutter entirely.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.