Get Top Price for Your Home by Furnishing It to Sell

Equal parts exciting and nerve-racking: That’s how the experience of selling a home can be described by just about anyone who’s done it. Exciting because you’re also in the process of starting a new adventure and looking for a new place to call home. Nerve-racking because of everything that goes into prepping your current home to get top dollar for it.

A huge piece of that process is staging, which involves expertly dressing up your home to make it look stunning to potential buyers as they walk through or browse online realtor site photos. Think of it as if you were styling it to be featured in a home catalog: You want the space to make potential buyers feel warm, cozy and right at home — everything they want to feel in the home they’re looking for!

It’s a necessary but seemingly an expensive task since, ideally, you would want to use the best furniture, appliances and accessories to make your space look as appealing as possible. But it doesn’t have to be daunting or expensive to pull it off. We have a few tips to show you how to do it easily and affordably on your own.

Why You Should Stage Your Home

If you’re reading this and wondering why you should bother staging your home for selling, we have a few reasons that boil down to a combination of strategic marketing tricks and savvy psychology techniques.

If potential buyers see your home the way you live in it, it will be difficult for them to conceptualize how the home could function in a way that benefits their day-to-day lives and shows off their personal style. Staging a home entails removing your personal “lived-in” look and showcasing each room in an attractive but neutral way. This could range from decluttering to displaying furniture in a way that makes a room look bigger to updating kitchen appliances. All this allows buyers to see the inside of your home and immediately get a sense for how their life, furniture pieces, family and style could seamlessly fit right in.

Staging is also crucial for ensuring you get top dollar for your home. In fact, according to the National Association of Realtors, staging a home can increase the dollar value offered for the home between one and five percent, compared to other similar homes on the market that are not staged. So, while there is more prep work involved to make sure your home looks just right, it pays off (literally)!

Pro Tips on How to Be Your Own Stager

People often assume they need to spend big bucks to hire a professional stager that would provide an evaluation on what changes need to be made for their house to be “sellable”, then work their design magic to make it all happen. And yes, that is one way to go about it — but honestly, it’s not necessary. By incorporating the following steps, you can easily stage your home yourself and save the extra expense.

1. Depersonalize

When in the beginning stages of staging, think of your home as a blank canvas. That’s not to say each room should be devoid of style and charm. It does mean you should remove personal photos on fridges, toiletries laying out on the master bathroom counter, religious items — anything that suggests that this is your home and restricts the potential buyer from seeing how they can make it their new home.

2. Declutter

If space is what sells (hint: it is), then clutter is the one thing that will stand in the way of that. Instantly make your home look and feel neater, more spacious and desirable by getting down to just the basics.

Like it or not, prospective buyers will likely open your closets, built-in drawers, etc., to look at storage potential and see how much space there is. If you have closets full of clothes, drawers filled with knickknacks and shelves stacked sky-high, it’s time to get to work and remove as many miscellaneous, noncrucial items as you can (especially before potential buyers arrive).

3. Deep Clean

No matter what (but especially if it’s an older model), your home needs to look and feel new to every potential buyer who walks through the door. So, from the floor to the corners of your ceilings, every square inch of the place should shine.

Again, you want buyers to feel like they could move in that day. A clean, fresh home suggests that you took great care of the property, kept things in order and didn’t neglect the small details over time. 

4. Details

Let’s face it: no home is absolutely devoid of nicks, scratches, holes and other imperfections. And while that’s generally understood, not fixing or filling these details can distract buyers and take their eyes off of the bigger prize. So, take the time to remove scuffs from walls, patch up distressed areas with a fresh coat of paint, and keep a lookout for areas that could use a little freshening up. This will also help prove that you’ve put effort into maintaining the property well.

5. Stage with Acima

You’ll especially want to consider adding furniture, appliances and electronics in the rooms where they make sense to achieve a certain look that will appeal to buyers.

While there is value in doing this, a big misconception about the idea of staging is that you have to spend a ton of money upfront. However, there is another way to get these pieces without hurting your budget, using traditional furniture financing or resorting to using a credit card.

With Acima, you can lease-to-own furniture (or just about anything) you need to achieve your desired “staged” look, all without credit*. Take inventory of the rooms that have the most potential to influence buyers’ decisions, such as the living room, master bedroom and kitchen. Then, determine what pieces you can shop for now and pay for later for using our lease-to-own transaction* that makes it all easy and affordable.

Bonus: You CAN Take It with You

Another misconception: The pieces you lease are solely meant to be used for staging, not keeping. Wrong! You can get the latest name-brand items through Acima at retailers across the country to help you transform your home and maximize its selling potential. Then once you sell your home and move into your new place, you can enjoy them yourself! So be sure to pick out pieces you’ll love because, when you do, it’ll be a double win.

Check off shopping for staging and new furniture pieces with Acima today!