Identifying what kind of buyer is likely to be interested in buying your home is an important first step in preparing your home for sale. Is the likely buyer a first-time buyer? a buyer with a young family? an empty nester? This likely buyer must be front and center in your decisions, when staging your home for sale. While it is important to declutter and depersonalize, you need to take it a step further and offer buyers more than a blank slate. SellWell Home Staging always has the target market in mind when staging each home.
In the case of a home in the Minneapolis and St. Paul North Metro (Anoka County, MN), price range $625 -$675K, the seller had decluttered and put in neutral bedding and curtains but, when SellWell Home Staging took on the home, it had been on the market unsold for five months.
Evaluating that the buyers for this home would likely be midway through their professional careers, perhaps with teen or older kids, and looking for space and luxury, SellWell Home Staging put together an inviting oasis.
In this BEFORE picture, you will see that the furniture set was too big to allow a nightstand to fit on either side of the bed – pushing one nightstand out of reach to the adjacent wall. This was a very spacious bedroom, there was no reason to leave the buyer with the impression “my furniture might not fit!”.
In the AFTER picture, another furniture set (also a king bed) fits perfectly and prevents the buyer from even forming the thought “my furniture won’t fit”.
In the BEFORE picture, the articulated gold wall sconces drew the wrong attention. This is a nice feature – individual wall lights with switches – but they looked dated and unwieldy. Also, because they were articulated and at an angle they did not photograph well. SellWell Home Staging switched these out for inexpensive modern fixtures with clean lines that added symmetry and warmth to the room, as you can see in the AFTER photo.
The white bed linen and curtains in the BEFORE picture are certainly better than a busy patterned fabric would have been, but they did not set the stage for our buyers to see the oasis that this room could be. Creating the tranquil, cohesive feel you see in the AFTER photo, SellWell Home Staging made easy modifications bringing in charcoal bed linen and peacock cushions, complemented by wall art, plants and simple accessories. The curtains were removed; blinds more than sufficed. Our buyer can enjoy the tree filled vista outside, giving them that feeling of space they were looking for. The walls were painted in a calming muted green (Northern Lights -PPG1137-2).
Finally, when staging a home for sale, look for the hidden spaces – these are treasures. In this room, it was the window alcove. A pair of chairs, only one visible in the AFTER photo, gives purpose to the space and elevates this room from owner’s bedroom to owner’s suite.