Today's post will be brief but I think you'll find it helpful if you find yourself trying to update a home with lots of brass hardware.
If you look back 10-15 years ago, brass was it. People loved seeing shiny brass on their doors, hanging from their ceilings and used as pulls on drawers and cabinets. Fast forward to 2008 and the look of brass is just plain, well, dated. There's just no getting around it.
If you're in a situation where you can afford to replace all those door knobs, light fixtures and switch plates when you're staging your home for sale, that's great. But many people I work with simply don't have the budget to replace them, at least not all of them. So what do you do? In some cases, paint is the best answer but in others, I like to use one of my favorite tricks in staging a home: forcing a tarnish on brass.
Taking a shiny brass switch plate or door knob and tarnishing it so it looks black is actually pretty easy. The solution? Easy-off oven cleaner. And not the low-odor kind. The old-fashioned kind that emits noxious fumes. This stuff will actually tarnish brass finishes right before your eyes -- it's pretty neat.
A couple of things to keep in mind: first, make sure you're actually dealing with brass or at least some metallic substance. A lot of bathrooms have fixtures (towel rods, tissue holders) that look like brass but are actually plastic, which won't react the way we want.
Second, you need to know that many brass items have a coat of plastic over them, so you may need to apply one coat of Easy-off, let it eat through the plastic, wipe off the item and reapply the Easy-off. This should then blacken the item as desired.
When it comes to light fixtures or cabinets knobs, my suggestion is to paint them. I like to use the Krylon Fusion line of paints on items like these because it sticks to just about anything you put in its path -- plastic, wood, metal -- whatever.
To give the fixtures or knobs the look of wrought iron, you'll first want to spray paint the item with some flat black Krylon Fusion and then go over it with a second coat of spray paint that has a wrought iron texture to it. (You'll find this at most hardware stores.) The Fusion acts as a primer, so the next coat of textured paint should stick well.
Finally, if you're doing door knobs, you'll probably want to either coat them a third time with textured paint or try a coat of spray-on polyurethane to help protect them when the cabinet doors are banged around a bit.
Good luck and happy staging!
In today's post, I want to cover some of the key staging concepts that experienced home stagers are well versed in, starting with...the 50% rule.
The 50% rule says that if you live the way most people live in their homes, you probably need to pack up 50% of your things when staging the house for sale. That may seem like a lot, but remember, when you're staging your home, the goal isn't for the room to be laid out in a way that makes you happy, it's to lay out the room in a way that shows off the square footage of the home and accent its strong points. And in most cases, you need to remove some furniture and many other items that are distracting to buyers.
Think of it this way -- do you have a picture or piece of furniture that most visitors compliment you on? If so, that piece, as beautiful as it is, may be distracting buyers from your great fireplace or your great view -- key things they need to notice and remember about the home for it make a serious first impression. It's one thing for buyers to remark on how well done the house is (great, we love that!) but it may not be as positive if buyers are remarking on your leopard-print sofa.
Notice in the prior sentence I said "may not be positive" because just like with most rules, there are exceptions. If you have something eye-catching in a room that's pulling buyer focus away from something that's a negative in the room, that may actually be a good thing. When they weigh the pros and cons of the room, they may not place as much importance on the negative issue (maybe it's outdated flooring) as they would if you'd brought a lot of attention to that item.
Where are you going to put these items you've packed away? Well, you have a couple of options. You could put them in the garage (buyers are usually understanding if a garage is neatly packed with a seller's items because the seller is obviously planning to move. It's far better to to have them in the garage than cluttering up your home.
Another option is renting a portably storage unit. There are several companies in and around Lexington, KY that will bring a pod to your house for you to load and then pick it up and store it until you're ready for them to take it to your new home. Yes, this costs money, but keep in mind that if your home is properly staged, it's going to sell much faster than if it's left as is, so you shouldn't have to pay this monthly expense for long.
I've got several staging projects going on right now that I'll tell you about as I get more involved with them, but for right now check out my before and after photos of some of my home staging efforts on a house I sold in 2 weeks here in Lexington. It sold for full asking price too!
Next, we have the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 rule. This rule says that when laying out the items in a set of shelves or bookcase, 1/3 of the items should be books, 1/3 should be other decorative accessories and 1/3 should be empty space. Pay attention to that empty space part! In order the your shelves to be shown off to their best advantage, the buyer has to be able to see some empty area around your possessions.
In fact, I sometimes go for proportions of 1/2, 1/2 instead, keeping a full 1/2 of the space empty to give the buyer the idea that there's tons of storage space available in this house. Even if the bookcases aren't built in, you're still making a positive impact on the buyer if your shelves are well dressed because they'll assume that if you have extra storage space while living here that they will too.
.If you can't see it, you can't sell it. This rule is all about bringing the visual focus to your home's assets and ensuring that they're not covered up. I can't tell you how many homes I've seen that have fireplaces partially obscured by furniture or other decorative items. A fireplace is one of the most popular features buyers ask for, so if they see it immediately when they enter the room, that's going to leave a positive first impression.
Another common problem is homes that have their windows partially blocked. Buyers respond better to homes that have lots of light -- period. (Well, unless you're talking about vampires or something, but that's another topic:) Open or pull up the blinds, open the curtains, move furniture -- let the light in! If your window overlooks a view that's not so hot, hang sheers from the window so the light can still come in but the view is de-emphasized.
Also, make sure all the bulbs in every fixture (including lamps) are working and turned on when the house is being shown. I know you don't always have time to run home and turn on all the lights before each showing, but do the best you can. If possible, leave them on throughout the day when you go to work if you're allowing showings during the day.
Having all that light streaming throughout your house will go a long way in making the home feel warm, open and wonderful to buyers.
If you smell it, you can't sell it. Well, this rule probably doesn't need a lot of explanation. Most homes have some kind of smell to them, particularly in the winter time when air gets a little stale. (If you have pets, this is particularly true.) Once you've lived in the home a while, you get so used to the smell of your home that you don't even notice it anymore.
To remedy this, you can use air fresheners, but let me caution you about this. Most air fresheners smell like, well, air fresheners and can leave the buyer wondering what kind of odors you're trying to cover up. So are you just stuck with it if your home doesn't smell fresh? No, of course not. Start by cleaning and doing a thorough vacuuming of any carpeted surfaces.
Next, I'd use one of my favorite air freshening products Fabreeze Plug-ins in "Laundry on the Line" scent. I love this stuff because it makes your house smell just like you've been drying clothes, which is a wonderful smell to greet buyers with. No, I'm not getting paid to endorse this product. I just want to share tips with you and that's a good one. You may have to look around to find that scent but it's worth it.
Welcome to the inaugral post for my new blog on home staging. My name is Sharon Roark and I'm an agent who specializes in staging the homes I sell to give my clients in the Lexington KY area the best results possible. I started this blog to share information about home staging and how it affects houses for sale in the Lexington market.
First, let me dispel with a couple of home staging myths.
Myth #1: Paint all the walls "hospital white" or "builder beige" to help a home sell faster. Not true. While these colors may be okay in some cases, buyers tend to respond much more favorably to warm colors like taupe, tan and soft sage green. What we're going for here is to use color to help prospective buyers feel "at home" when they come to your house and plain white or beige don't usually give off that "feels like home' feeling.
Myth#2: I've decluttered and taken down my personal photos so my home's staged. Once again, simply not true. While decluttering and removing personal photos are the first steps in staging a home for sale, they are just that -- first steps, not the final steps. Once they're completed, that's when an experienced home stager can make a world of difference in your home's appeal. A good stager will know how to work with your furniture and with colors to help enhance your home's appeal. And the proper placement of accessories can make all the difference.
One of the principles I follow when staging a home is that it's important to create "emotional touchpoints" in the home's primary rooms. This means placing certain accessories in a way that will help the buyer envision himself/herself doing something pleasurable in the room. When they can "see" themselves enjoying the room, they're on their way to buying that home. And believe it or not, when I look at model homes in Lexington or elsewhere in Kentucky, I find many of them missing this essential element. The seller may have gone to great trouble to place exquisite furniture in the house, but it doesn't "feel" like a home, it feels like a museum -- somewhere that you can look but not touch.
Myth #3: I can stage the home myself. Probably not. Most people are just too entrenched in their homes to see them from a buyer's perspective. The door that squeaks or the chipping paint on the corners of the walls just blend into the background for you, but they won't to a buyer.
Myth #4: Staging a home is all well and good, but it doesn't affect the bottom line. Definitely untrue. Studies by HUD and others show repeatedly that staged homes bring, on average, 6% more than un-staged homes even in a down market! On a $200,000 home, that's $12,000! When people see a house that looks "nice" they attach an actual dollar value to that appearance. It's no different from when you're dressed nicely compared to when you're dressed in your sweats. If I go the mall dressed in a typical work outfit, people will try to help me because I look like I can afford to buy something. When I go in sweats, sales clerks tend to ignore me because I don't look like I'm likely to buy anything.
Over the coming weeks I'll be posting before/after photos of homes I've staged in Lexington and Central Kentucky and sharing more information about how they did on the market. I hope you enjoy my posts. Feel free to email or comment if you have a home staging question or topic you'd like to see addressed.
Sharon