Should you call the “Stage Coach” to your Ottawa home? Five Things to Do.

Posted on March 2, 2008 
Filed Under Listing and Selling Your Home, Valerie Zinger

Stage CoachyYou are going to sell your house and have seen all of those TV shows about getting your house staged before putting it on the market.  What should you do?  I will meet with you and provide an opinion of the amount of work that may or may not be required. 

We are all sensitive to criticism.  It is tough to hear that your house isn’t perfect.  Before spending money on the services of a professional stage coach, you can do the following five things.

Tart up the yard and your front door. The front of your house gives buyers their first impression of your house.  As you know, you only have one chance to make a good first impression.  So…. if there is snow - shovel; if grass - mow; if you have flower beds - weed; windows - wash (inside and out); front door - paint.  You can take a picture of your house to a paint store such as Randall’s and the staff will help you pick an accent colour for your door. 

Clean your house.  Start scrubbing.  This is not the 3 hour blitz that you do every week or two but a thorough top to bottom clean.  If you have the money, bring in a cleaning service and work with them to get the job done.  Wash your windows to let in the light.  You want to watch out for mold in the grout in the bathroom.  This area bothers people - a lot.  Sometimes buyers will love your house but be looking for every single fault just to justify their first offer.  Reduce the reasons and increase the offer.

Remove clutter.  I will do a long article on this at a later date but for now think - clutter is taking up valuable real estate.  Your house will look smaller if every nook and corner is stuffed.  To make the house look bigger, remove unnecessary things.  Think of this as your first round of packing for the move.  One caution, don’t strip your house so much that it looks artificial.  Over-staged homes are beginning to bother buyers almost as much as homes with too much clutter.

Be selective on personal items.  Buyers are curious.  Remember, they are out looking and by the nature of this function they start getting curious about who lives in the houses that they are visiting.  Do you want people to know where and when you graduated by the degrees hanging on your walls, how the family enjoyed Disneyland by the photos everywhere, what medicine you take by the bottles left in the kitchen cupboard, what items you purchased at an ’adults only’ shop?  Yes, you live in the house but some things are just better left private.  Look at your house and see what it will tell strangers about you. If it is too revealing, remove it or store it out of sight. 

Fix the broken bits.  You don’t need me or a professional stager to tell you that the leaky faucet, the broken window, the running toilet, the missing knob on the cupboard door and the broken air conditioner all need to be fixed or replaced before the house goes on the market.  Several houses ago, I lived with a hump in the middle of the wall-to-wall living room carpet.  It became invisible to me until I needed to sell the house.  The first person I called, after my real estate rep, was a carpet installer to stretch the carpet and get rid of the excess material.  I only wish I would have taken the time to remove the flocked wall paper.  It drove me crazy and I am sure every potential buyer was put off by that paper.  Well, that was at the beginning of my habit of moving and I would not make that same mistake now. 

Now that we have the ‘bones’ done, we can consider the services of a stager.  There may or may not be a payback on getting the house painted, furniture rearranged and furniture leased for the duration of the sale.  We may want a stager to give us his or her most valuable advice.  Telling us to clean the house or fix the tap is just something that we can do without being told. 

Photo Credit:  Stage Coach by:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/thivierr/773614933/

Valerie Zinger ~ Ph. 613-723-5300 ~ Email vzinger@royallepage.ca

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