Setting the Stage: How to Sell a Home Fast

July 28 2010

Recently I read an article about how to stage your home to sell fast. I found the article to be very interesting and informative. You can read the full article here.

The reason I really liked this article is because it offered information that works TODAY. What I mean by this is that many websites offer tips on selling a house, but they are all “theories” rather than real-life facts. In other words, they may or may not work. However, we need solid information in today’s market in order to sell houses.

Below you will find the article. I hope you find it as informative as I did.

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Staging a House to Sell Fast - Here’s What I Did

There are thousands of websites that offer tips on staging a house to sell. But most of these lessons are hypothetical in nature. They aren’t backed up by real-world scenarios and case studies. This article will be different. I’m not going to share a bunch of home staging “theories” with you. Instead, I’m going to tell you how we sold our home in eight days - and how we staged the home to accomplish this goal.

Staging a House to Sell - A Case Study

In this lesson on staging a house to sell, I’ll tell you exactly what my wife and I did to stage our home. We sold our home during a relative downturn in the housing market. This all happened in July 2010, when housing inventories were high and demand was low. It was a buyers’ market where we lived, as was the case elsewhere across the country. But despite these challenges, we got an offer in just over a week. In fact, we received a total of four offers. Two of them were for the full asking price. Here’s how home staging played a role…

Curb Appeal and Backyard WOW Factor

We have a lot of landscaping in our yard. Plant beds, flagstone path, bushes and shrubs, etc. So we brought in a landscaping crew to do a clean sweep, from front to back. They de-weeded the entire yard, added fresh mulch where needed, trimmed trees, shaped bushes. You name it. They did in eight hours what would’ve taken me a couple of weeks.

Here are some pictures of the end result.


I also spent a lot of time getting my grass in good shape, and keeping it manicured. You can see this in the photo above. Healthy, green grass is a bonus in a hot climate. Potential buyers realized they would inherit a nice lawn. And when you’re staging a house to sell fast, every little bit helps!



We put a lot of effort into the backyard, because we knew it was one of the biggest selling points for the home. This helped us set the home apart from others in the neighborhood. That’s the whole point of curb appeal and home staging - to set your home apart from the competition. We stained the wood fence, hung colorful flowers in baskets, added some plants where needed, and even bought some new patio furniture. We took the furniture with us when we moved, but it added a lot to our staging efforts.



Staging the Inside of the House

Inside the house, we painted all of the walls with a neutral (but attractive) color scheme. We had some bold “accent walls” in several areas. Such colors are taste specific. We toned it all down to appeal to the majority of buyers. This is a key concept when staging a house to sell fast. You have to make the home appeal to the largest possible audience. And that means avoiding things that are too taste specific.

We also upgraded the light fixtures in all three bathrooms. Prior to this, we had those builder-grade “Hollywood lights” in the bathrooms - basically an aluminum rectangle with bulbs sticking out. We replaced these with some brushed-nickel light fixtures with frosted glass shades. Remember, the key to staging a house to sell is to make it different from other homes in the area. We knew that potential buyers would be used to seeing the cheap lights. So we invested in some upgrades. Just a little more of the wow factor.

We also de-cluttered the house from top to bottom. We made a dozen trips to the Goodwill, gave stuff away to friends, and sold some of our excess furniture on Craigslist. The house seemed a lot bigger when it was all said and done. It’s a lot easier to stage a home if you do a bit of purging first. Trust me.

Here are some pictures of the interior, after all of the painting, de-cluttering and upgrading.



In the family room, we just de-cluttered and rearranged the furniture to suit the space. We also neutralized the color scheme (the room used to have a red accent wall).



In the master bedroom, we created a “reading nook” just by adding a chair and lamp. We had these items elsewhere in the house, so it didn’t cost us anything.



The front room when you walk in the house could serve several purposes. It could be a dining room, an office or a den. We set it up as an office. The key is to let each room serve a singular purpose. Multi-functional rooms and empty spaces only confuse buyers. Staging a house to sell means removing all of the guesswork. Don’t make people guess what a room if for - show them the possibilities.

The combined out-of-pocket cost for staging and preparation was a little over $2,000. That might seem like a lot of money to spend on home preparation, but the results were worth it. At a time when most homes sit on the market for weeks or months, we were able to get an offer in eight days. We actually had buyers competing to buy the place. This rarely happens in a buyer’s market, and it’s the direct result of our home staging and pricing strategies.

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Staging a house to sell can be a lot of work. But it can help you sell the home faster, and for a higher price. This is what every seller wants. I hope this case study has helped you realize the value of proper staging.