When you put a home on the market, you also understand that getting it ready for prospective buyers is an important part. Staging a home for sale means you have to make it look inviting to a number of potential buyers. When it’s vacant, you will have to haul in some furniture and decorations because this will help buyers imagine themselves living in that house, explains Pillar Management. However, preparing a home to attract the interest of buyers is quite difficult when you’re on a budget.
Most home sellers spend about $1,800 to $5,000 or more to stage a home. But you don’t have to worry because there are ways that you can stage your home without the need of spending too much. To help you, out here are some tips on how you can stage your home for less than $1000.
1. Stage Your Vacant Property Virtually
This is aimed at online shoppers who may quickly lose interest in a slideshow full of ceilings, floors, and walls. Most of the sellers or real estate agents today send their clients photos, therefore, when you virtually stage your home, all you need is a camera. You can send potential buyers photos of empty rooms and send them back images of the same rooms, tastefully furnished, to be used online and in marketing materials.
You can also hire virtual stagers and they usually charge $225 to $325 depending on the inclusions. Photos are usually sent in high-quality and by paying an additional fee, you can also get the photos of the empty rooms printed which you can mount on the wall for open-house visitors to see.
2. Pay for a Plan but Do the Labor Yourself
There are a lot of stagers who work as consultants. They will tour your house and give you suggestions on how you can best present it. The average fee for a consultation from home stagers is $350 and included in this is a tour of the property for two hours or longer, taking of photos, and a 30 to 50-page report.
You can pay for a consultant to give you advice, but to save money, you should do the cleaning, decluttering, or renting of storage space. Make sure to take away all your personal things such as family pictures, cosmetics, appliances, and other grooming supplies you have.
You can also choose to paint the rooms in light and neutral colors because they are more appealing and they can make the rooms look bigger. Cleaning your property on your own is great because you can get it done for little to no cost at all, provided that you have the time and all the help you need.
3. Negotiate for Décor Only
When it comes to home staging, you will need to put some scenery to your home or accessorize it with beautiful furniture. But it’s not necessary to buy these things because you can rent them instead. There are some home stagers that can lend you some wall arts, area rugs, lamps, and other accessories for around $250 a month plus a one month’s fee for setup and breakdown.
4. Focus on the Main Rooms
When you hire a home stager, you can just let them focus on the main rooms in your home such as the entryway, living area, kitchen, and the master bedroom. It’s because stagers usually charge $75 to $125 per hour. This means that when you let them ignore secondary rooms in your home, you will be able to save a lot of money. Then, you can just simply do the secondary rooms yourself once you’ve observed what they did to the main rooms.
5. Use Available Equipment at Home
When transforming other rooms in your home, you don’t always have to purchase things because you can search the house, garage, yard, or garden shed for some useful things. For example, if you need a curtain for a certain room, maybe you can use a sheet from your linen closet and just tie it back with a rope. When you get creative, you will spend not even a dollar in giving the rooms in your home new themes and ambiance.
6. Step Outside
Once the inside of your home is fixed and is ready for viewing, you shouldn’t forget to step outside as well. It’s also important to clean up some debris outside and remove the dead plants and shrubs on the yard and garden. Make sure to remove the barbecue grill from the deck as well.
It’s also best if you can refresh the exterior walls of your home, especially the window ledges and the mailbox. Remove or clean up the streaks and rust spots on downspouts and try to repaint the fence as well. Ideally, you can spend around $660 to $940 when you have an exterior touch-up which also includes repairs to roof, porch, and gutters.
We hope these tips will help you achieve the goal of making your home look great to potential buyers while spending the least amount of money possible. Remember, staging your home does not have to mean breaking the bank.