Want To Sell Your Home Faster Try Home Staging

Do you need to sell your home fast for a great price? Try home staging! This article tells you how to use home staging to decrease your homes days on the market and increase the sales price!

Home staging helps homeowners to prepare and market their home by setting it apart from other homes for sale in the same real estate market. Professional home stagers are professionals that help you in preparing your home for sale. They help you create a very good first impression on potential home buyers by taking care of your house and improving its appeal.

Professional home stagers rearrange your homes furniture, making it more organized and improving the flow from room to room. They help you redesign your house so that it appeals to potential homebuyers. They can also suggest and, in some cases, purchase furniture or fixtures to make your home show its absolute best!
To put it differently, they make your house sell-able with their design experience and expertise. Home staging is particularly useful where prices appreciate slowly and finding a buyer takes a lot of time.

The Home Staging Process

The first impression is the key to a good offer (read: high price) and quick sale. Most buyers make up their mind even before entering the house! That is why it becomes so vital to create a winning first impression. The professional home stager helps you prepare your house for the best impact possible.

Zeroing in on a professional home stager is not difficult. You can ask your friends and acquaintances who have recently sold a house for references. Your Real Estate Investor Deals, real estate agent or company can also help you in this regard. In all probability, they might have already utilized the services of the professional home stagers in your area.

Once you have zeroed in on a few home stagers, the next step is to get an estimate from them. Mostly it is a quick and accurate process. You should then make calculations and comparisons. It is always a good idea to discuss their estimates with them before making a final decision.

It is also important to take into account others factors like the condition of your home, asking price and average time the houses are for sale before a deal is clinched. Asking price is the most important factor. If the asking price is low, it may not make sense to hire a professional home stager. These factors and others go a long way in helping you make an informed decision about hiring a professional home stager.

On occasion your real estate agent may also contribute to the fees of your professional home stager. This may be done when your real estate agent is convinced that the fees are reasonable and the investment is worthwhile.

Doing It On Your Own

If you dont want to spend money to hire professionals you can do home staging on your own. Here are a few tips on do-it-yourself home staging:

Clean your house, yard, kitchen, bathrooms, drapes, and carpets. Wash the windows.
Make your home organized and less cluttered. Remove all the unnecessary objects. If need be, rent a storage unit for all your extra stuff. This will make your home look neat and spacious.

Clean out and organize all closets.
Have the interior of your home freshly painted in neutral colors.
Check the floor. It might need refinishing.
Rearrange furniture, or even rent some pieces to showcase your living spaces.
Update bathroom and kitchen fixtures. Replace cabinet pulls.
Remove personal pictures and rearrange others.
Home staging can help your house sell faster and at a better price than you probably would be able to without any preparation. The thing to remember is that your home should appeal to a wide variety of buyers. Staging your home will put your home in its best light and help potential buyers to envision themselves living in your home.

Important Tips For Making A Successful Career In Home Staging

Until some time ago, whenever someone wanted to sell their vacant property, they depended entirely upon their luck for being successful in sealing the deal. The success of any such deal also depended largely on the whims and fancies of the potential customers with the seller being at the receiving end. The situation has become quite different today with the emergence of home staging. This field has grown at an enormous rate during the past few years. Staging is also a profitable business like many others and holds a special place in the real estate market. With the passage of time, this field too has become more professional. Anyone who wishes to join this field today is required to have home staging certification.

Having completed a proper home staging course from a respectable institute can help you in breaking into this field quite comfortably. A certification in staging tells your clients about your talent and also helps you in strengthening your position in this field by picking up new customers. Additionally, having a certificate in this field from a renowned institute under your belt will also help you in honing those essential skills that you will need in order to excel in this field. The more sophisticated you become at staging a home, the higher your chances of becoming successful will be. Acquire skills that let you envision how rooms will look at their best for succeeding in the field of home staging business.

Various studies have shown that properly staged houses sell up to 50% faster than the ones that are not staged. Home staging course also gives you many important tips about how to make a positive impression on the mind of the potential buyer in the shortest possible time because it has been seen that most of the people decide about whether or not they should buy a house within a matter of few minutes. It is important therefore to create a favorable impression, of the house you are selling, on the mind of the potential buyer so that he finds the home to be attractive enough to move in. Moreover staged homes have a clear competitive advantage over other homes that are not staged by a home stager .

Keeping the above mentioned things in mind, it is extremely important to select a home staging training very carefully. Searching the internet for getting details about good institutes in this field could prove to be a rewarding idea. A good home staging trainer will guide you and help you in nurturing the skills that are necessary for making a successful career in this field.

Check out http://www.apsdmembers.com now!

Home Staging Tricks That Turn Lookers Into Buyers

Its pretty difficult for one home to stand out from others. In our neighborhood of rustic, mountain cottages paneled walls, worn country furniture and cheap quilted bedspreads abound.

But those houses are also slow to resale.

So if you want a quicker sale pay attention to dcor that attracts buyers.

Its sometimes difficult to create the perfectly inviting atmosphere that will bring people in to stay.

How can you do it?

Decorating magazines stage rooms for photos so the each vignette is beautiful in the eyes of the beholder. Its what sells the magazines and it can sell houses, too.

Each doorway to a room is the photo shot that can attract a buyer.

In your house do they see a bunch of electronics and a tangle of wires when they walk into your family room?

Is there a pile of muddy sneakers in the entry?

Is the kitchen disappearing under a lot of mail, dishes and appliances?

Are the kids rooms weird and scary?

So fix things. If you have no talent for decorating, you know someone who does. Get them to help you.

1.Stage your front yard. Make it look great. Have some flowers or hanging baskets. Does your grass look green? Is you house visible from the street? These things matter. Take care of the details of curb appeal.
2.Make your entry look great. Most entryways can be staged with a table or bench and a nice rug. Put the book bags, briefcases and sneakers away.
3.When you enter a family room or living room its ideal that the first thing the eyes spot is an inviting seating area for 4 people. You also need attractive lighting and end tables. A coffee table is OK if it does not impede traffic through the space. Dont fill the space with too much furniture. People have to have room to walk through and look.
4.Make the kitchen look uncluttered, clean and serene. A small wine rack and one appliance can stay out for showings. Dont leave a lot of stuff on the counters, especially mail. All mail and other valuable stuff needs to be locked away.
5.Make beds the star of all bedrooms. Stage them with beautiful cotton bed linens in light colors and 2 bedside tables with lamps. Put the bed directly across from the door. Other furniture may be unnecessary even in master bedrooms. If you have a big room create a seating area. Dressers may make the room look too crowded.
6.Try to put all clothing in closets instead of dressers. And stage the closets as beautifully as any other rooms. Store anything that does not look neat off site. Buyers look for lots of storage so closets matter. Make them look great and leave nothing on the floor.
7.If your furniture is old and dated you might get some new things. A loveseat and 2 matching chairs look great and you can take them with you. You might even find some things second hand. Skip the big sectionals and flower prints. Solid colors and some interesting throw pillows are easier.
8.Dont confuse buyers about a rooms purpose. For example having a shop area in what should be a bedroom is a big mistake that could cost you cash. Stage eating areas with tables and bedrooms with beds. If your house is for sale you wont have time for hobbies anyway.

Its hard to live in a house thats for sale. Everything has to be perfect and it all has to stay perfect until the house is sold.

Your house will have to look like a magazine or a model home.

Serenity and staging can sell homes faster. Make your place look like a magazine. Your kitchen, family room and master bedroom and bath are especially important. Make sure they look their best.

How May You Make Your House Looking Like A Million Dollar Home

There are numerous people, who’re unfortunate, while selling their homes. Such things happen, since the major part of these individuals, dont want to invest some money and time to stage their houses. That is why here we would like to raise the issue of home staging and its particular importance for the quickest and beneficial home sale.
In spite of the fact that each individual has his or her own requirements along with tastes, many people still possesses a very similar knowledge of comfort and luxury. That is why, home staging tips, it will be not so difficult to follow some general factors, applied to create a unique atmosphere within the exterior and interior of a house, that may be appreciated by many people.
So, first of all it can be essential to make your property looking nice and trim. The existence of garbage or clutter will unquestionably spoil the impression made by the house, while you will demonstrate it to your prospective buyers. Secondly, the rooms within your house ought to be well-lit, to permit your prospective buyers to view the furnishing of the home. And thirdly, the furnishing of the property and also its particular style must provide the atmosphere of harmony and luxury, where your prospective buyers will be able to relax and enjoy their time, while residing at home.

You can attempt to create this kind of pleasing atmosphere, hiring your own personal understanding of style and comfort along with some general principles we have already mentioned above. Nevertheless, if you’d like to get the the greatest results, while making the house looking expensive and even acquiring the highest price for its sale, then it will be crucial to consider the advices of an professional teaching how to stage a house to sell.
Today the real estate home staging appears to be quite intricate issue that will require a distinctive approach and consideration of the volume of significant points, which could be missed by non-professionals. To start staging a property we offer you to find out about the decorating ideas given by Lise Desormeaux, that’s known as a successful Home Staging and Decorating Educator. Her home staging tips present a wonderful guide as for realtors as for homeowners, who will be able to transform their properties into the million dollar homes, that may be immediately sold. These hints might be also great for those, which are intending to furnish their abodes into the clutter-free and beautiful homes by not hiring a decorator.
Follow the guidelines of Lisa Desormeaux, available on www.lisedesormeaux.com, and you will be qualified to save a lot of money, discovering the powerful suggestions for home staging.

Top 10 Reasons Home Staging is a Great Home Based Business

If you have a flair for decorating and an interest in real estate, Home Staging could be the right career for you. This service business, also called House Fluffing, Real Estate Staging or Home Styling, is based on the art of decorating a home to sell quickly and for top dollar.

Home Staging is a great service business to run from a home office for these 10 reasons:

1.Home Staging is a low cost business to start.

You can work from your own home office. You don’t need a store front or inventory. You also don’t need expensive advertising to grow your home staging business successfully.

2.There is no need to invest in inventory or recruit others into the business. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing scheme.

If you’ve researched the subject of home-based business, you’ve probably encountered lots of schemes that want you to buy inventory and recruit others into the business too.

These are multi-level marketing businesses. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing business. You don’t have to buy anything and you don’t have to recruit anyone else to join the business. This is something you can do on your own without any recruiting pressures. You aren’t expected to pester every friend and casual acquaintance you’ve ever had to invest in your -unique opportunity.-

3.Home Staging has been recognized as one of the best growth businesses.

Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses, and the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program is the ONLY home staging business opportunity recognized by the magazine for the last three years in their business start up guide books.

As your own boss, you are in control of how fast you want to grow your home staging business. There are no outside income pressures because this is not a multi-level marketing scheme.

4.The financial rewards are there if you work hard to build your Home Staging business.

Home Stagers create real wealth for their clients by effectively decorating their homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. Once clients realize the significant return they can make on their investment in home staging services, they don’t feel it’s unreasonable to spend several hundred dollars for even two hours of a stager’s time. In other words, working only half a day, you can make what many people take a whole week to earn. If you have five clients in a single week, you can earn more than you did in an entire month of working full time.

And with real estate markets slowing in many parts of the US, the demand for (and interest in) home staging services will continue to grow as desperate home sellers look for an alternative to the costly price reductions their agents recommend.

Home staging businesses can also thrive in a hot real estate market as savvy home sellers realize the greater profits they can make when they have 10 or 15 buyers bidding on their homes, instead of the two or three they might have had before staging.

5.You can still have time for your family or other demands while running a Home Staging or Real Estate Staging business.

You control when you meet clients. If you only want to work during the day when your children are at school you can arrange it that way. -I have an opening for you on Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM works well!”

Or, if you want to start this business on the side while you already have a full time job, then you can meet your clients on evenings and weekends. Many of them will really appreciate it as they work themselves.

6.As a Home Stager, you will have daily opportunities to be creative and meet interesting people.

Home Staging projects very much depend on the creative solutions you develop for your clients, and each one is unique. You get to see the end result very quickly and meet lots of different people as you deal with real estate agents and homeowners.

7.You will enjoy variety and a sense of adventure in a Home Staging business.

Home Staging projects are very short term in nature, lasting days or a couple of weeks. Each house is different and you’ll be visiting streets and neighborhoods you didn’t know existed as you build your home staging client base.

8.You decide who you want to work with and what kind of Home Staging projects you want to take on.

Since a Home Staging project is short term in nature, if you find yourself with a -client from hell,- you know they won’t be in your life very long. If you find there are certain real estate agents that don’t share your approach to business, or treat you with less respect than you deserve, don’t work with them again! There are thousands of real estate agents to choose from in most markets. Did you know that in California alone there are 200,000 agents? Clearly not all of them are equally good or equally pleasant to be around!

9.Since you visit clients in their homes, you do not need to worry about what your own home looks like to run a successful home based business in Home Staging.

Nobody needs to know where your home office is and they certainly don’t need to visit your home. So, don’t worry if your house isn’t a reflection of what you want to present to Home Staging clients. The most important thing is to always present yourself in a professional manner.

10.Home Staging does not require specialized training or official credentials because there are none for the Home Staging industry.

Despite what some organizations claim for their own marketing reasons, there are no official credentials to be a Home Stager. You can call yourself a Professional Home Stager today and no one can say anything about it.

Of course calling yourself a Home Stager doesn’t mean you’ll automatically know how to price your services, build your business and get clients. These are important skills to acquire if you want to be financially successful. The relevant point here is that you don’t have to undergo years or even months of training to get into this business.

In fact, the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program will teach you how to grow a profitable and creatively satisfying business in only 10 hours. But you need to already have a basic talent for how to arrange furniture in a room because this is not a hands-on decorating course. Visit http://www.stagingdiva.com for more info. ________________________________________

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Free quiz to see if a home staging business is right for you at http://www.stagingdiva.com

Ways of Finding Home Foreclosure Listings

So you have fixed your financial situation and are ready to purchase a foreclosed property, all you need now is a nudge to the right direction with home foreclosure listings. All buyers look for good bargains and there are no better bargains around than home foreclosures. These pre-owned homes are offered to the market after their former owners failed to pay the loans they took out to pay for their homes. Foreclosure homes sell for a lot lower than their real market value and there are various types of properties that are in foreclosure so you can definitely find the right one for you.

The Best Resource

Your best source of home foreclosure listings are the online subscription services. For a minimum fee, you can take advantage of a wide range of listings that are updated on a daily basis. Online home foreclosure listings will have all foreclosure properties across the country, so it also a great resource for people n the real estate business looking to make investments in different states. A good home foreclosure listings service offer tools and value added services to ensure that your search yields good results. They would normally have specialized filter options that you can use to narrow down your search. They will also offer valuable literature on your preferred area with information on demographics, cost of living, social and community services. Some of these subscription sites offer email customer support manned by professionals to answer whatever questions you may have. When looking for a good home foreclosure listings service, go for the ones that offer a special 7-day trial package that will help you decide if indeed you need the service.

Other Resources

You can check out public notices found at courthouses across the country for home foreclosure listings. You may also find home foreclosure listings in newspapers of large circulation, which usually carry information on home auctions and other foreclosed properties. If you have time in your hands, you can give out flyers and post some of them to let everyone know you are looking for properties in distress. You should post your flyers in high-traffic places like malls, gyms and supermarkets to ensure that a lot of people see them.

Banks also have their list of foreclosures as well as other financial institutions like mortgage companies and lending institutions. Most of them will not directly transact with you so you need to be represented by an agent or broker.

Beyond Sight and Sound

In the 2005 best seller Brand Sense, author Martin Lindstrom says that as much as 83% of all marketing communication is limited to sight and sound. In the real estate business most of the marketing communication is done by sight. Ads placed in local newspapers, the MLS, and post cards announcing open houses etc

However, the most important marketing communication happens when prospective buyer crosses the threshold of a house.

This is very similar to the experience a shopper has when entering a store for the first time. It is at that point, that first impression, where you must use emotions as the media for your message.

The more senses you appeal to, the more dramatic the emotional response will be. I am not talking here of the old trick of baking cookies to get that smell throughout the house. Everyone likes it, but they know the trick so now, it appeals to their logic versus their emotion. But what if you had a fresh basket of lavender at the front door just as they came in? For some reason, which they can’t even articulate, they feel welcome. It might give them a cozy feeling of when they were a child going to their grandmothers home (because we all remember the lavender sachets grandma had in her drawer). It feels right and it completely appeals to their senses, not their logic.

When staging a home for a retail sale, it is vital to appeal to as many senses as possible. For that reason I use a variety of what I refer to as “Pockets of Emotion” throughout the house. These are those moments in a home that surprise you and make you laugh, give you pause while enjoying a fond memory, or appeal to your senses on such a high level that often times, you can’t even describe why it feels so good-it just does. I strategically place these “Pockets of Emotion” to suggest that “yes this is a perfect child’s room, because my child is playing right now” or “this is a great kitchen for our family holiday baking projects”. These Pockets of Emotion are designed to truly engage all the senses, not just the sense of sight.

In addition I use the sense of hearing when ever possible. If the home is in a high traffic zone, I may have light music playing in the background to take the focus away from the outside noise. Another great sense of sound is a fountain bubbling and birds chirping (and yes, I know how to make that happen at just the right moment!).

When I stage a house, you will find that I use not merely the senses of sight, smell, and hearing but of touch as well. I love having people touch something as the feeling stays in their fingers then entire time they enjoy the home. It is also a great reason to have them remove their shoes, if you have really wonderful carpet, so they can feel it on their toes. I also use interesting and textured fabrics to draw people into a room. It is so interesting to watch people as they are drawn into a room and encouraged to reach out and touch a window treatment or pick up a pillow. It helps them to fall in love with the property and feel as though they are home.

As for the sense of taste, I have found it is always a good idea to put a tasty surprise where prospective buyers are sure to find it. I often will put a bowl of big beautiful apples in the refrigerator, so it’s a surprise when they open it-with a sign that says “An apple a day keeps the Doctor away-enjoy!” or even seasonal cookies or candy inside an intriguing container that it is so attractive you can’t help but take the lid off.

Remember the more senses you engage, the more emotional the response will be and because of that response the more memorable the experience. Your ability to reach a buyer with a truly memorable experience can be summed up in one word: “Unforgettable”

Often in the blink of an eye, a prospective buyer will a sense whether the environment they have just entered is authentic or not. They will be able to get “feel” if the property is right or wrong. It is my job to make sure that it always feels right and to give them the opportunity to fall in love with their new home, on the spot. When they fall in love-we know the house is sold.

Home Staging Marketing Strategies to Sell Properties

Is Your Marketing Hot?

The number one question that I always get from all of my clients, whether they are Certified Home Stagers, Home Stagers in Training, Real Estate Agents or Investors, Small Business Owners, Speakers, Entrepreneurs – you name it, this is their question: How do I market my business?

Many have some idea how to market their business, but they don’t know how to effectively market, in order to get the results they desire, which is the key. Usually, they delegate their marketing to an advertising channel such as the yellow pages, some random online marketing or a flyer or two that has been passed out at a meeting in the hopes that everyone that takes one will call you back keep hoping!

I love the coffee cup above as an extra hot marketing tool. Not only is the Bakery advertising with each cup of coffee, but they are in turn selling advertising to other clients on the mug. Super Smart! And of course the mug makes sense to their customer since they serve all sorts of coffee drinks at the Bakery.

Could they have done better with an extraordinary offer and a guarantee? Of course! The problem was lack of space, so they worked with what they had.

The real question though, is what does it take to make your marketing hot?

1) It must speak to your customer- Just like the coffee speaks to the customers buying a croissant, yours must do the same. Ask yourself who your customer is and what appeals directly to them. Is it a real estate agent, an investor, a home seller who is your customer and what speaks to them? Then, make sure your message sizzles!

2) Scare them or speak to their greed- Yes, that is the truth. The best way to capture your customer’s attention is by scaring the pants off of them or appealing to the sense of greed. So, if you are marketing your Home Staging Services, then you would send them a message like; Are you ready to sit on that listing for another 6 months? Or, Would you like to make an extra $5,000 this month?

3) Make in Incredible Offer- You can do this in a variety of ways. It can be accomplished with a 100% money back guarantee, the offer of a FREE flatscreen TV, 50% off, Buy One Get One Free, or even thru a great prize that your customer wins by participating in your contest. The idea is to give them something so juicy that they feel compelled to give you a shot.

4) Market Consistently- One of the most attractive things to potential clients is that they see your marketing consistently. Now they know you are not a, fly by night, home stager, running your business as a hobby instead of as a real company, and that you are smart enough to know how to market. That in and of itself is often appealing enough to some future clients.

5) Surprise them with your Marketing- The coffee cup was a surprise, so it was fun. When we stage homes and hide a pocket of emotion in the drawer and the buyer opens the drawer, that is fun (and it is house marketing). Having a message like the 25 reasons a rubber duck can sell your home is a fun surprise because they don,t expect it. If you really want to have ..hot..marketing, surprise them with the unexpected.

I think the last thing I would say about marketing is to simply look and see what your competition is doing and do the opposite. They are the ones inclined to post an ad and then not get any calls so they quickly determine the ad does not work. Hmmm, maybe they did not place an ad in a location that their customers see, or the ad just was not compelling.

The best example I can give for this is when I started my own Home Staging company, I looked around at all the other Home Stager Certification Program out there talking about making houses pretty and it dawned on me that there marketing was all about them instead of the results they could achieve for their potential clients. That is when I came out with our tag line of “Anybody can make your house pretty, we make it SELL.” Obviously, that did the trick.

So, let’s get you a great list of customers beating down your door so you can show them how extraordinary you really are, while introducing them to your hot marketing.

Sincerely,
Karen Schaefer – Home Staging Training and Certification APSD
Karen Schaefer

Home Staging How To Patch A Hole

When youre staging a home to sell, you will probably come across many minor or major repairs that need immediate attention such as a leaky faucet, loose door hinges or holes in walls. Wall patching can be considered one of the most common home repairs. Home owners are notorious for hanging wall art and in turn creating holes. Moving furniture will also damage your walls. Whatever the reason, it is a must do-it-yourself repair anyone can do with the right steps. The following home staging tips will help you patch a hole in any room of your home.

What you will need:
– You will need the following items to begin your hole patching job: drywall, drywall screws, spackle, putty knife, drywall tape, water, texture spray, rough/fine sandpaper, studs, touch up paint, gloves and painters clothes.

Step 1
Locate the hole(s) or dent. By using a knife or narrow saw blade, cut the drywall around the damaged area until you have a close to perfect square. If the hole isnt big enough to expose some stud for patch support, you may need to use the stud you bought to build with the existing studs for patch support.

Step 2
Cut a piece of the spare drywall as close to the size of the square opening as possible. Use a knife or saw to gently remove any pieces around the edges a little at a time until you have a perfect fit.
Step 3
Press drywall into place and secure it with the drywall screws into the studs. Be sure that the screws are no more than half an inch from the crack between the wall and the patch.

Step 4
After you have installed the patch, youll need to patch the cracks and blend the wall together. Using some rough grit sandpaper, sand the wall around the patch to remove the texture, if there is any.

Step 5
Using your putty knife or scraper, spread a little putty around the patch, filling in the crack. Before it dries, spackle a thin coat that covers the wall and patch (this should also cover the screws).

Step 6
Next, cut a long piece of drywall tape and soak it in water for a few seconds. Then, using your fingers pinch the tape and slide it through to remove excess water. Align a piece of the tape along the four cracks, being sure that it covers a little of the wall and a little of the patch, while at the same time covering the screw (this is why the screw shouldn’t be too far from the crack). If you did this before the paper dried it should stick to the spackle. Make sure the drywall tape is all the way against the wall so that there are no bubbles. After it has dried, you may spread a couple more thin coats of spackle to cover the drywall tape.

Step 7
After the drywall tape has been covered with the thin layers of spackle and has dried completely (best over night), use the fine grit sand paper and sand the spackle until the patch and the wall blend smoothly. Do this cautiously so you dont overdo it.

Step 8
Use a damp cloth and carefully remove any sanded powder from the wall and allow it to dry.

Step 9
Following the directions on your spray can of texture (match that of your walls) then spray, allow it to dry completely over the course described on the directions before painting.

Step 10
Now the wall is ready for paint. If the paint matched the color of your repair, then you know you did the job properly and there will be no sign of a repair job. Apply a couple coats and let dry.

Presto! You just patched a hole in the wall. With the easy do-it-yourself tips above, patching a hole will be no problem. Make sure you tackle the small repairs your home will need before you begin your creative home staging task. The end result will surely be a masterpiece!