Face Value : You can take simple steps to spruce up your home and catch the eye of prospective buyers
Last summer, my husband and I were more than ready to sell our two-bedroom, one-bath Long Beach home. “Whatever we have to do” became the family motto. Pressure-wash the house? Sure. Paint the trim? No problem. We were motivated and ready for an onslaught of buyers--we thought.
Then our real estate agent showed up at the front door with her own ruffled, rose-colored comforter in her arms, smiling sweetly and talking about “just sprucing up the back bedroom a bit.” Next came some throw pillows . . . and a small lamp.
Now this was getting personal. But I shut my mouth and paid attention. Within a week, and for not much money, our agent helped us “stage” our home, turning a standard-issue California bungalow into an adorable cozy cottage--which sold for a good price in three weeks in a down market.
It all started when our agent (after tactfully substituting that comforter for our old bedspread) asked us to watch a video, “How to Prepare Your Home for Sale--So It Sells,” by Barb Schwarz, an Issaquah, Wash., broker. Following the video’s instructions, we rearranged furniture, packed up personal items, added a rustic cinnamon broom to the fireplace hearth--and basically felt as if we were living in a museum. Even the toothpaste got put away every morning.
But that’s what it takes to stage your home successfully, Schwarz said, because “buyers only know what they see, not the way it’s going to be.” By hiding the shaving cream, stashing the coffeepot and packing up those family portraits, you’re giving prospective buyers some breathing space and a chance to visualize their coffeepot sitting on your kitchen counter.
And let’s face it: The competition’s tough out there. “Right now in the Los Angeles area, there is one buyer for every 25 homes for sale,” said Gail Woodruff, an affiliated broker for Clark Realtors in Long Beach. “You have to use every little thing you can to make your home stand out.” Here’s some advice from experts.
Getting Started
* Think clean. “Many buyers will walk out of a dirty house without even considering what’s underneath the dirt because they feel so uncomfortable,” Schwarz said. Professional steam-cleaning for carpets and draperies is usually well worth the expense, she said. But there are a lot of cleaning jobs you can do yourself. Clean the top of the refrigerator, scour the stove, scrape the Barney stickers off the refrigerator.
From a potential buyer’s point of view, “Your house should be clean beyond clean,” said consumer advocate Alan Fields, co-author (with his wife, Denise) of “Your New House: The Alert Consumer’s Guide to Buying & Building a Quality Home.”
“Having a cleaning crew come through is good, but it’s not enough,” he said. “The kitchen and master bath are extremely important. Polish the faucets [paste wax works wonders], wipe down the sinks, bleach the stained grout. A nasty kitchen or bathroom really turns people off.”
And don’t forget the windows. “Clean windows can make a house seem at least 20% brighter,” said Jim Olsen, owner-broker of the Buyer’s Agent of Orange County.
* Look at your walls. Is your teen-ager’s bedroom filled with posters? Potential buyers may see only holes to be filled and walls to be painted. Ask your child to pick one or two favorite posters to be rehung after you fill the holes and repaint the bedroom, Schwarz said. And speaking of walls, does each room in your home have a different color scheme? Simply painting all the walls off-white can make your home appear more spacious.
“A gallon of white paint, on sale at a hardware store, usually costs less than a family trip to McDonald’s,” Schwarz said.
* Start packing now. “When you get ready to move, you’ll need to pack anyway, so just start packing early,” Schwarz said. Pack up extra books, out-of-season clothing and sporting equipment; stack the boxes in the garage or in a rented storage space. The object is to clear away all unnecessary objects, especially those on coffee tables, dressers, kitchen counters and night stands. Don’t strip the house bare, of course. “Just limit little knickknacks to groups of one, three or five,” Schwarz said.
* Create more space. If you have a small dining room, remove the extra leaves in your dining room table and store them in a closet. Also consider moving extra dining room chairs to storage.
When it comes to the kitchen, ask yourself, “What can I live without?” Schwarz suggested. You probably will be too busy to bake homemade bread or fix gourmet meals for a while, so stash the food processor and mixer in the cupboard. Try to show the maximum amount of counter space to make the kitchen appear as large as possible.
* Be brutal with bathrooms and kitchens. Put away all but the most needed cosmetics, brushes, perfumes, etc. Keep necessary items on the counter in a small group, perhaps in a basket or on a tray. Consider re-grouting tiles that have moldy or cracked grout. “Also, put away small garbage cans or hide them behind the toilet,” Schwarz said. “And keep the toilet lid down.”
Needless to say, dirty dishes in the sink and crumbs on the counter don’t cut it. But keeping the kitchen clean--consistently--is one of the toughest challenges in staging your home. Said Schwarz: “You have to keep the kitchen clean every single day your house is on the market, because you never know when the right agent with the right buyers will walk through the door.”
Stash scouring pads and dish drainers under the sink. Clear away messages, photos, takeout menus, cartoons and school papers that have accumulated on the refrigerator.
* Follow your nose. Of course, pet, cigarette and cooking smells can send potential buyers scurrying off to the next house on their list before they get past your living room.
Keep litter boxes clean. Also, try increasing ventilation by opening windows on opposite ends of the house. In many cases, the carpet and drapes will need to be steam-cleaned. “Pet stores carry products to eliminate odors, and they really work,” Schwarz said. To add a pleasant aroma, set out small baskets of potpourri, especially in bathrooms.
* Spruce up the fireplace. Clean out dirty ashes and close the screen. If the screen is old and rusted, spray paint it with heat-resistant paint. (Our painter used black heat-resistant engine paint, available from auto parts stores. Worked like a charm and it doesn’t blister or peel.) To remove soot on the inside of the fireplace, use soot remover or oven cleaner, Schwarz suggested. “If you can’t get rid of the soot, consider painting the face of the fireplace with brick paint from the hardware store,” she said.
* Add decorator touches--on a budget. When we staged our home, we went to Pier One, bought a cinnamon broom and placed it on the fireplace hearth. The broom cost about $5. It looked great. And potential buyers commented on our “cozy living room that smells so good!”
Even if your agent doesn’t offer to loan you her favorite quilt, don’t be shy about asking friends and relatives to loan you beautiful framed prints, a large plant to cover a bare spot or a homey-looking wall hanging.
* Don’t forget the outside. Curb appeal is what gets the looky-loos to stop and check out your home. Take an objective look at your house, Schwarz said. Does the front door need painting? Is the front porch crowded with dead potted plants?
“If the front door and porch look old and ratty, buyers assume the inside looks bad too,” broker Woodruff said. “Also, make sure the doorbell works. If it’s broken, buyers will assume you’ve let everything else go too.”
Plant overgrowth keeps potential buyers from really seeing your home. “You can’t sell it if you can’t see it,” Schwarz said. Overgrown shrubbery can also make the rooms inside look dark. So trim the trees, buzz the hedges and let the sun shine in.
Next, decide if you need to hire a lawn service. If you decide to do the gardening yourself, weed all planting areas and groom and fertilize the lawn. Then make a commitment to weekly lawn mowing and maintenance.
* Clean the garage. Although your garage can be a great storage place for extra boxes and furniture, make sure you’re not parking your car on the street because you can’t fit it in the garage, advised Ruth Hayles, a realtor associate at International Realty and Investments in Los Angeles.
Showings and Open Houses
Once you’ve staged your home, it’s time to add those final touches that will make your property stand out.
* Dazzle them with your flyer. It’s unusual these days to see a “For Sale” sign that doesn’t include a box of flyers to highlight the features of the home. But as any house hunter will tell you, at the end of the day all the flyers--and the properties--start to look alike. How do you make your home more memorable?
“Buyers love to see floor plans,” said Woodruff, who always adds the home’s floor plan to the flyer. Including a sample rate sheet also encourages potential buyers. “I show payments for the first year at different interest rates with a 15-year fixed mortgage, a 30-year fixed mortgage and an ARM.”
Including a photo or artist’s rendering on your flyer is another good memory jogger. “I have a local artist do renderings for my listings,” said Woodruff, noting that the sketches cost about $100 each. “It creates a classier image, and if you’ve got a telephone pole in front of the house, you can eliminate it from the rendering.”
* Use highlight cards. “You can’t put everything on a flyer,” Woodruff said. But you can create folded stand-up cards that describe your home’s special features. “If you have beautiful Kohler faucets, put a highlight card in the bathroom,” she said.
* Show your home in its best light. When your house is being shown, turn on all the lights, even in the daytime. Leave all curtains, drapes and blinds open. And keep the stereo tuned to soft FM music, Schwarz said, not hard rock or “funeral music.”
* Don’t forget your pets. “Be cautious about having pets around during showings,” Woodruff said. Ask your agent to note in the MLS listing that you have a dog and where it will be during showings. Also consider posting a note on the front door or near the lock box explaining where the dog is. “It’s best if your dog is outside if you’re not home,” Woodruff said. Or confine it to a specific area of the house with child-safety gates.
One more thing: “Don’t forget to clean up after your dog every day,” Hayles said. “You don’t want any surprises when people walk around the back yard.”
Is the effort required to stage your home worth it? “When you stop to think that staging can help you get the most equity from your home in the shortest amount of time, the temporary inconvenience is a small price to pay,” Schwarz said. And after just three weeks of picking up our socks, keeping the toilet seat down and playing elevator music on the stereo, my husband and I--escrow papers in hand--had to agree.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Getting the Kids to Help
Make staging your home a family affair, suggested author Barb Schwarz. Including the kids, even at a young age, can make staging seem like a fun family project. Here are a few tips.
Young Children
Ask your child to put his or her toys into two piles--favorite toys and those he or she is tired of, Schwarz said. Then suggest packing up the less-interesting toys in a special box marked “Open Me First.” When the child opens this box in the new house, all the toys will seem new again. In the meantime, you’ve cleared a lot of the clutter from your child’s room.
Teen-Agers
Teen-agers may be less than enthusiastic about a family move, Schwarz said, and therefore uncooperative when it comes to staging their bedrooms and keeping the house clean. She suggests offering teen-agers a “staging reward”--a new computer game, tickets to a concert or sporting event or a video store gift certificate--in exchange for their cheerful cooperation.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
For More Information
Books:
“How to List Residential Real Estate--Successfully” by Barb Schwarz, $25. To order, call (800) 392-7161.
“How to Sell Your Home in the ‘90s--With Less Stress and More Profit” by Carolyn Janik, Penguin Books. $11 Available at bookstores.
“Your New House: The Alert Consumer’s Guide to Buying & Building a Quality Home” by Denise and Alan Fields, $11.95. (Presents house shopping from the buyer’s point of view.) To order, call (800) 888-0385. Also available at bookstores.
Video:
“How to Prepare Your Home for Sale--So It Sells” by Barb Schwarz, $59. To order, call (800) 392-7161.
