Home Staging 101: The Best Time to Buy or Sell a Home

Home Staging 101: The Best Time to Buy or Sell a Home
Credit for this blog:  Christine Rae, President of Certified Staging Professionals

In her blog, Home Staging 101: The Best Time to Buy or Sell a Home,  Christine Rae simplifies which day of the week to list your property and the best time to buy or sell a home. 

I'm sharing this blog to provide my readers with a tidbit more information so there are fewer obstacles and less stress in the process of selling or buying a home.

One of my favourite and inspirational quotes:

“When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.”      Zig Ziglar

Preparing To Sell From a Home Stager's Prospective

 Preparing to Sell From A Home Stager's Prospective

Posted: 15 Jan 2013 05:09 AM PST

As I sip my coffee, on this cold and brisk January winter morn, I am pondering ideas what my recommendations would be if my family should decide to sell our home and move this spring. As a professional stager, I have the advantages of current home décor, contacts, resources and knowledge to present my home with its best features highlighted to motivate potential buyers to purchase our house quickly and for our desired asking price. So today, I devised a ‘to-do’ list if we were to position our home on the real estate market in the near future:

• Organize our personal and business accounts; and prepare all documents for 2012 tax revenue submission. Add T4s and receipts as received.  Place the file(s) for easy access.
• Conduct a family meeting to detail the events about to occur, the tasks to be done, and determine who and how each member can assist. Set reasonable goals to work within your family schedule. Arrange family days to offset the stress of selling and moving – movie night with popcorn in front of the TV or outdoor activities (skating, snow tubing, building a snowman) for fresh air and fun.
• Think as a stager! (Remove yourself as a home owner and think of your home as a marketable ‘product for sale’). Perform a detailed staging consultation on your home with photos.
• Search local storage facilities/options for storing purged belongings, excess furniture, office files not required in the next 3 months. Questions to be considered – Heated space? Space requirements? Distance from home? Access hours? Do we want to store any belongings within the homes of family members?
• Determine and tag which home furnishings & décor items will be sold on Kijiji, during a garage sale or from an ad in the local newspaper and/or to be donated to Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity Restore, etc..  Note to self: Must remember consignment stores too!

After this is said and done - getting the projects completed will be time-consuming, and need to be organized and monitored according to the calendar of events planned earlier.

Realistically, I would allow 6 -8 weeks to prepare our home, during the winter months, prior to showcasing our home for the market. Why this length of time? As other home owners depend on my availability to consult and stage their homes for sale, I need to give extra time to dedicate to my house.  London is located in the snow belt of Southwestern Ontario. Too, the paint will take longer to cure. Why stress my family out with tight deadlines.

• First on our list of projects would be to repaint the UWO purple wall colour in your son or daughter's bedroom.   Definitely, the painted walls would not be a colour-safe staging choice.
• If your home was notoriously spotless and was staged perfectly to sell except for the final professional cleaning and final touch-ups, 1-2 weeks would be an obtainable guideline before listing. 

Would this professional stager consult with a fellow stager when selling?

I certainly would for ‘another set of objective buyer’s eyes’ should I have worn the hat of a home seller for a moment and overlooked the slightest tweak. I’d have one of my staging friends tour the showcased results and get her/his sincerest opinion and make changes if necessary.  Just being honest!

Not only do we stage or showcase homes, stagers can assist home owners in so many ways. I have and do assist home owners from the moment they decide to sell and many, prior to securing a real estate agent. We do more than push furniture around or recommend you store away personal photos. Trained to objectively view your home as a home buyer, we can present recommendations where to begin, help owners prepare lists of tasks to be done, suggest budget-conscious DIY projects, offer staging tips, and provide contacts to connect with for those projects that are outside of the owner’s comfort level or expertise. Staging is a team effort between the home owners, the home/real estate stager and any professional affiliates if required, and the listing real estate agent. A very important lifelong and mature lesson I have learned - there is no ‘I’ in the word TEAM.

Cheryl Trudell, Canadian Certified Staging Professional, is Lead Property Stylist/Stager of Home Staging 4 Success

RESA’s 2013 Top 10 Rising Star Home Stagers of the Year™ North America.