Home Staging: How much is just enough?

These are the questions which I often encounter from clients. The answer is — it depends! Each house and each situation being unique, so is the approach to staging your property. But we’ll try to give you some general rules and tips to help you evaluate what needs to be done to sell your house quickly and for most money.

On average, you should plan to spend between 0.5 and 1 per cent of the property’s market price on fixing it up and staging it.

How do you decide where should your money go? A good starting point is to walk through your house and examine each room — be critical and objective. If a room looks small, cluttered and/or unclean, put it on the “to do” list. If you notice things which need to be repaired, your visitors will too, so put the items to be fixed on the ”to do” list as well (cracked and chipped paint, dirty /old carpeting, broken door/closet handles, missing/broken lights, doors that don’t close properly, missing/broken tiles, etc). A clean, bright, spacey and freshly painted house is already an excellent start to your home staging project! Actually, you are 80 per cent done at that point.

From ordinary to Wow!

The rest are final touches which will take your property from ordinary to "Wow!" Depersonalizing, optimizing your living space, as well as adding a few tasteful accessories, will insure that your house looks its best and is ready for dozens of potential buyers. If you can’t stage the whole house, focus on the main areas: entrance/hall (that’s where the first impressions start), living room, dining room, kitchen and master bedroom. If you are able to, stage a bathroom as well. Don’t forget the outside — make sure it looks clean and up kept.

In general, when staging, a golden rule is “less is more.” It sounds obvious, but it’s not, especially if you are living in the house. So, if in doubt, ask your realtor or a professional staging consultant to give you a hand. Staging services are not very expensive, as a few hours of their time will usually suffice and it will be worth the money as it will come back to you many times over at the sale time.

Stage your house — sell your house! • Sveta Melchuk is the founder of Home Staging Montreal, a firm which specializes in Home Staging and Interior Redesign since 2005. Please visit www.home-staging-montreal.com for more information or contact us at 514-482-9776.