Staging Your Home for Sale: Give Every Room a Purpose

If you want to sell your home for top dollar, even in a slow market, you’ve got to take steps to make it appeal to buyers. One of the best ways to do that is by staging your home. There are many steps involved in staging a home to make it appealing to buyers and one of the most important is giving each room a purpose. If you’ve got a spare bedroom or extra living room that you have many different types of furniture in or are using for several purposes, you’ll need to make a strong statement with it if you want to sell your home.

Staging is a real estate sales technique that helps buyers envision what it will be like to live in the house. You’ve got to detach yourself from your home and think about it as an investment…what will appeal to the general public the most? In most cases your combination office, playroom and craft room isn’t going to make people want to sign on the dotted line.

Even though rooms like this make sense to the homeowner, they don’t appeal to buyers. On a walkthrough of your home, buyers need to get a clear sense of how they’ll be able to use the space. Combination rooms just don’t cut it. They get confused by the room’s purpose and don’t know what to do with the space – even if it’s pretty obvious that they can use the space in anyway they want to just as you have.

In order to stage your combination room, you first need to decide what type of room you want it to be. Spare bedrooms should be staged as bedrooms. Bonus rooms should have a clear focus. Home offices are very popular these days and you can’t go wrong with giving your potential buyers a place to house their computer and important paperwork. Craft rooms and indoor playrooms are also another good idea for single purpose spaces, but they won’t appeal to as many people.

Once you’ve declared the purpose, you need to move all furniture and items that don’t meet that purpose out of the room. Since you don’t want to clutter the garage with more junk, you should put your extra furniture in storage while you are selling your home. This little bit of inconvenience can make a huge difference in your selling price, so it’s well worth the rental cost.

Design your new single purpose room with a lot of space to walk through. Buyers like rooms that feel big and open. If you are making your room into an office, use a single desk with a computer and perhaps one other piece of furniture. Bedrooms should be furnished with a single bed to show off the floor space.

By declaring a purpose for a room you eliminate confusion for your buyers and give them a clear idea of how they can use the space. This investment of your time and energy can make a huge difference in your selling price.

About the Author:
Joe Cline writes articles for Austin Texas Realtor. Other articles written by the author related to Cedar Park real estate and Austin real estate can be found on the net.