Lets stage that home to sell!

Getting ready to sell your home? Appearance is everything from inside to outside of our home. Let’s take a look into staging a home at a price that will not cost you $1000s of dollars like many of these local Virginia, Maryland and DC staging companies now cost!

Let’s start off by DECLUTTERING!

Packing away personal items is one of the first steps in staging.  Remember you want to ‘de-personalize’ your home so that buyers can view it as their potential home.  Think about it like this: prospective buyers will not be able to picture themselves in your house if they are surrounded by dozens of photos of your children, pets and grandparents. Plus you definitely do not want people wasting time looking at photos when they should be concentrating on the beautiful features your home has to offer!

Here at VMDC Realty we cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get rid of clutter.  People in our area tend to fill their homes with everything they can buy from area malls like Tyson’s corner or Potomac Mills mall and put it in their house.  Unfortunately decluttering is the hardest thing for most people to do because they are emotionally attached to everything in the house and believe their stuff will help sell the house!  Trust us when we say no one wants to see your CD collection – make some room and show off that beautiful hard wood floor!

Next step is to removing items from countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms.  Show off that huge counter space and let the potential home buyer imagine putting their toaster on the counter next to their own blender.

It’s crazy how important putting things in boxes and neatly stacking them in the corner of the garage is. What is even better is to put stuff in a rented storage unit.  Many people don’t understand that storage units are actually pretty cheap and can fit a lot more than you expect.  Public storage in Herndon Virginia offers you a spacious 5-foot-by-5-foot unit for less than $90 a month.  Remember that you will only be using this storage room for a

few months and well worth the investment in our opinions!  Also don’t forget to take advantage of your friends who live down the street in Sterling, Virginia or your family who live on the other side of the river in Potomac, Maryland.  Some friends/family if asked nicely will be willing to store a few boxes (not 20) for a few months.

Let’s talk about closets!  Closets should be “neat and organized.”  They should definitely not look cluttered and messy.  Get rid of those pair of shoes that you haven’t worn for 10 years.  Those Jeans that haven’t fit since the early 90s need to go as well!  Do you really want to take all those old worn out items that you probably will never wear again to your future home?  Don’t forget that donating can give you great tax advantages at the end of the year.

Painting and flooring is a huge factor in selling your home.  Sellers who paint the interior of their home and make sure their floors are looking like new will hopefully see a large return on the investment!  No one wants to move into a dirty home!  Remember: Fresh, neutral paint on the walls, trim and doors is worth its weight in gold — it makes everything appear clean and new.  Stop by any of our local home depots found in Reston, Falls Church, Bethesda, Rockville etc and get a gallon of paint for as low as $20 (you still need to spend another $20-30 on other painting supplies (primer, brushes, drop cloths, etc).