8 Mistakes to avoid when staging your home to sell!

Here at Jacaranda Spain, we want to give you our best advice to help you realise the maximum value of your property. It may be that you have been thinking about selling for a while and just don´t know where to start. Thats where we can help! First of all, if you are feeling overwhelmed about how to get started, we are only a phone call away. An informal chat with one of our team might be the thing that will give you the confidence to take the plunge, or convince you that you want to wait a while.

Before we get your house listed and on the market, you are probably thinking about how you can “stage” your home to give it a certain “wow factor”. The first and most important thing to remember is this;

You want to make it easy for your prospective buyer to envisage living in this house, and how nice THEIR possessions will look in it.

NOT

Show them YOUR personal possessions so that they can see how much YOU loved living in the house.

These are two very different things and, if you are house hunting, as much as you might be interested in the sellers story, that is NOT what will make you buy it. 

If you turn your thinking on it´s head, we hope it will help you see clearly why we often start banging on about de-personalising and de-cluttering! Unfortunately for you, we may well suggest this when we come to list your house, but, we promise, we have your best interests at heart and we wouldn´t be doing our best job for you, if we worried more about hurting your feelings!

Here are our ideas about how to avoid mistakes that can, and do, affect the value, even if they are aesthetic. At the risk of throwing in another cliché… First impressions really DO matter!

8 Home staging mistakes we don´t want you to make:

1. Trying too hard to be fashionable - You may want to spruce things up with a new colour scheme and some new accessories, it´s important to buy what suits the house. Also, remember, if your house doesn´t sell straight away, items that are “on trend” can end up looking dated.

2. Everything neutral - Bathrooms, kitchens and walls are better in neutral colours but that´s not to say, everything should be beige. Rugs, soft furnishings and wall hangings should add colour to make it feel like a home, not a waiting room.

   

3. Neglecting a fresh coat of paint - You may think your paintwork is clean, but a lick of paint everywhere will make it look, and feel, like a new house and this can be done at a relatively low cost.
4. Dark rooms - This one is tough if your house is a little on the dark side, but there are ways of lighting rooms that can help. Take down any heavy dark coloured window furnishings and use lighting and mirrors to illuminate your rooms cleverly. Make sure all your bulbs are the same colour, LED soft or warm, white bulbs throughout all the rooms, different hues can upset the balance and may even make a room appear darker than it is, if you have moved from a brightly lit room.

5. Badly positioned furniture - You may think that moving large pieces to the walls will create a more spacious feel but this can also make a room lack character and homeliness. It may be better to define different spaces by keeping sofas etc more central. Like the TV area in this big, open plan, indoor living space, in this beautiful townhouse in Orba  https://www.jacarandaspain.com/property/1878/town-house-for-sale-orba-valley-costa-blanca.html

   

   Walkways to access other rooms should be kept clear however, your layout should flow and feel practical.

6. Empty rooms - Taking out cumbersome furniture can be a good idea, but be careful not to make a room look empty. If you do have empty rooms, borrow some furniture to stage it. Every room should have a purpose and character.
7. Just a quick clean - Make it a deep clean every few weeks while your house is on the market. Your house will look and smell better for it.
8. Tatty outdoor areas - Sometimes sellers are so focused on making the house look it´s best inside, that they forget about the outside. Especially here in Spain, outside living is on every house hunters wish list. Staging the outside to help the buyer envisage lounging and dining al fresco is essential. Even if you don´t have a lot of outside space, a small courtyard can look so inviting with a nice table and chairs and a few rustic pots with flowering plants. This beautiful townhouse in Llíber was very quickly sold!
9. 

If you still feel overwhelmed and need some advice, someone from the team at Jacaranda Spain would be very happy to give you another opinion. With our knowledge and experience, we can tell you how to make the best of your property, often without spending any money!