8 Home Staging Tips From Top Orange County Realtors

Here are a few things you can do when preparing to place your home on the market.

How to stage your home. Brad Feldman Group Brad Feldman 949 678 5198 Laguna Niguel CA 92677 Real Estate Listing Agent scaled 1

Our Top Home Staging Tips

In preparation for placing your house on the market, it’s essential to keep in mind that you are selling not just your home but a lifestyle. As top Orange County, CA, real estate agents, we help home sellers to prepare their homes to appeal to the widest swath of qualified buyers and help them see themselves living in your home. A large part of actualizing this picture is home staging, like an illustration for your storytelling.

Here are eight of our top tips to prepare and stage your Orange County home for sale!

1. Declutter and Depersonalize

YA room overcrowded with decor, furniture, and personal trinkets don’t just look unsightly. It makes it harder for prospective buyers to imagine themselves living there. Selling your home is often a highly emotional process. Still, it’s important to store away lots of “stuff” that we inevitably accumulate over the years—even if it’s our own personal taste or if it has meaningful personal significance. Less is almost always more when it comes to walls, floors, furniture, and built-ins. If you are staging without professional help, be thoughtful and judicious with your decor choices to let the home breathe and speak for itself.

2. Use a Neutral Palette

Some people love pastels, while others go gaga for bold and vibrant colors. Each of us has different tastes, which is a wonderful thing! But when it comes to selling your home, the last thing you want to do is turn someone off. We’re going for the broadest appeal here, not a single buyer’s tastes. A neutral color palette is best to appeal to the widest audience for paint and other splashes of color—like a backsplash or feature wall. This doesn’t have to be boring, but classic white is a pretty safe bet.

Using a monochromatic approach when repainting also saves money and time: you don’t have to buy multiple colors of paint or switch out brushes and other equipment from room to room.

3. Curb Appeal Matters!

“Curb appeal” is the first impression a buyer gets from your home. When they drive up to the front yard and home facade, what do they see? The grand scheme of things is a relatively low-cost but high-impact solution to ensure that your landscaping is neat, paths are clear, and your exterior paint and siding are in good shape. Make a buyer’s first impression a good one!

These days, yards are in higher demand than ever. Our advice for your home’s front yard and facade applies to the backyard, too, if you’ve got one. A little landscaping and tidying up go a long way to give your home exterior a much-needed glow-up.

4. Maximize Natural Light

There’s something truly relaxing and invigorating to the sunshine reaching through a room, warming your skin, and showing off your home’s interior in its best light (no pun intended). No matter how many windows are in your home, it’s always helpful to maximize the natural light you have to make the space more inviting. The straightforward way to do this is to open up all the curtains and let the light shine in, ensuring all windows are clean. You can also use strategically placed decorative mirrors on the walls to enhance the sun’s rays, lighting up what might otherwise be a more dreary part of the space.

5. Set the Scene

Small, thoughtful touches can add up to make a big difference. Whether it’s adding some wood into the firepit, placing rolled towels on poolside lounge chairs, or putting a good book on the side table of a sitting room, all these simple stylistic choices can help a buyer to see themselves living in and enjoying your Orange County home for sale.

6. Showcase Unique Features

Even in a condo or planned development, every home is unique (if only for its unique location!). While you prep your home to hit the market, consider what you find most charming or unique about it and accentuate those features. Don’t be afraid to adorn the walls with a few pieces of artwork or decor that are bold and different, featuring exclusive items that aren’t found just anywhere. Grab their attention and let them remember this place.

7. Less is Usually More

A minimalist perspective is a good way to approach home staging. Yes, most of us have many things strewn about our homes to enhance our daily living. But for photos, videos, open houses, and private showings, too much stuff can detract from the sense of space throughout your property. Even in a professional staging, we like to use smaller furniture pieces that do not dominate the space, leaving room for visitors and their imagination. In this scenario, less is more.

8. Make Smart Updates

You don’t have to pour money into your home before selling. You DO NOT have to pour money into your home before selling! Not all home improvements are created equal when it comes to returning on investment. With hundreds of home sales under our belts, we’ve seen these projects’ good, bad, and ugly. Don’t expect to recoup your investment on a pool or really any major renovation. These things are best left to the new owners to decide if they want them for themselves. (Again, we want to appeal to the broadest swath of buyers. Some of them won’t care about the new six-figure pool.)

We have learned through the years that certain projects can make your money back and then some. The highest impact, lowest cost, and best return-on-investment home preparations tend to be:

Painting
Lighting
Landscaping
Deep Cleaning
Professional Staging
Smaller Repairs (if warranted)

Most of this can be done yourself if you want to get the most bang for your buck. Of course, when you’re gearing up to sell a home, you already have a lot on your plate and on your mind. We help our Orange County home seller clients by connecting them with quality, vetted vendors to do the work, so they don’t have to, while we coordinate it all behind the scenes.

If you are worried about the work your home needs before you sell, please reach out to learn how we can help! We are happy to learn about your situation and discuss your options with no obligation. Contact the Brad Feldman Group.

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Buying or selling, your success starts with a genuine connection. Our team is committed to understanding your personal situation and helping you achieve your long-term goals. Take the next step today by clicking the button below and selecting your preferred method of contact. We look forward to hearing from you!

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