New View Home Staging Blog

External curb appeal and your entry way are the two items that create a buyer's all important first impression of your home.  A potential home buyer will make up their mind about your home in under one minute.

What first impression would your home leave a buyer?

The goal of using Feng Shui to stage your home is to balance all five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) in and around your property. (We are only going to look at external curb appeal and your entry way in this post.)

For a Feng Shui Cheat Sheet on the Five Elements, please take a look here: http://activerain.com/blogsview/1314589/using-feng-shui-to-correctly-prepare-your-home-for-sale

The external curb appeal of your property is very important when selling your home. The way your home looks from the street is representative of your home's chi or energy.  Abundant green landscapes, that are well manicured, are chi reservours.  To keep positive chi flowing on your property, please remove any dead trees or plantings from your front yard. Please keep your front yard free from debris and well maintained. The importance of a first impression can not be underestimated.

Please keep your driveway well lit and free from debris also; please fix any broken or cracked driveways immediately. If your driveway descends sharply towards the street, please install bright lights on both sides of the driveway.

Feng Shui considers the front door and entry to be the most important places in your home.  The front door (or Mouth of Chi), determines the amount and quality of chi or energy that will flow through your home. A grand, open entry way will support the flow of chi.

By clearing out items that are behind your front door (such as bikes, old magazines, shoes, toys), chi will be better able to enter you home.  The goal here is to let chi flow unobstructed right into your home. 

Your home's front door should be upright and well-hinged; it should be very easy to open and close.  If your front door creaks when it is opened, it is disturbing the harmony of your home and needs to be fixed.

The front door of your home needs to be the correct size and in correct proportion to the size of your home.  A door that is too large can cause financial problems, whereas a door that is to small can lead to family disagreements. Minor flaws at your front door can affect you negatively.  The reverse is also true, by making minor improvements at your front door entry you can significantly impact your life in a positive way.

Good chi can be further attracted into your home by proper lighting attached to the outside wall of your home. 

Your front door should open into a bright space that has room for chi to breathe. 

To maximize the movement of chi and to prevent stagnant chi, please open your windows and let the fresh air filter in.

By paying close attention to the placement of Feng Shui objects on and around your property, the amount of positive chi will be increased which will result in more potential home buyer activity.

-Kate

Kate's Home Staging and Redesign serves the Rockland County and Orange County area of New York, Bergen County and Passaic County of New Jersey. Kate is an affiliate member of the Passaic County of Realtors. Kate's Home Staging and Redesign is now offering Full Digital Services to sell your home quickly. In other words, we will bring in the accessories, we will stage your home, we will re-take all the digital pictures, and then we will load these pictures into a virtual show to help sell your home. The virtual show is being offered to all our clients FREE of CHARGE to help SELL your home. We also sell a full line of semi-custom window coverings.

 

Picture an occupied home -- comfortably furnished, nicely decorated. How would having it staged help it sell? Is it worth the expense? Here are five reasons for sellers of occupied homes to consider a professional home staging consultation:

#1 –Getting a home ready to sell can be overwhelming to sellers, and they may not know how to begin or what to do. Home stagers can tell sellers where to start, and then guide them through the process, from paint color selection to furniture placement.

#2 – Occupied homes are lived in. The sellers have gotten comfortable with the things they have and how they are placed. Their homes are set for the way they live. The next owners will have an entirely different set of things and their own routine. To market their home, the sellers must consider how the house would work for someone else, and be willing to make changes to the way they live while they sell the home. It’s all about the buyers now, and stagers can help sellers make that mind shift and the necessary changes.

The owner of this office was willing to pack up about 20 boxes of books and largely clear the room out. He was rewarded with a sale in 30 days.

 

#3 – Sellers need help to see the home as a buyer would. Stagers provide “outsiders’ eyes” to see the home differently. Not only can we view the home’s features impartially, we can spot “red flags” – signals of potential problems – that the seller either knows are no longer a problem (like water stains resulting from leaks now repaired), or is unaware of.

For example, the china hutch in this kitchen was a clear indication to us that the home did not provide enough storage for the sellers’ things. The buyers were likely to assume that there would not be enough room for their things, either, so we advised the sellers to put it into storage.

 

#4 – Decorated does not equal staged. Although they are often beautiful and warmly welcoming places, decorated homes are not meant to be sold. They are meant to be lived in. They are often highly personal, and the décor can distract from or cover up some of the home’s features. Décor can also go out of style. The point of home staging is to show off the home (not the furnishings or the owners’ taste) and make it appeal to a wide segment of its target market. The more highly decorated a home is, the harder it is for buyers to picture themselves making it their own.

Being unbiased outsiders, stagers can point out decorative elements that are too particularly individual, such as paint colors, wallpaper, or collections. The owners of this home had many lovely things, including a curio cabinet containing a large collection of angels. We advised them to pack the angels up, and the result was this welcoming reading nook, instead of a museum likely to distract buyers.

 

 

#5 – Home stagers specialize in presenting homes to their best advantage. That’s our full-time job, and something we love to do. We are students of home merchandising: We know what colors work well for marketing homes. We know low-cost solutions for outdated furniture and décor. We know whether furniture needs to be removed or added, and how to arrange that furniture so that it shows off the home. We know how to help home sellers, who are experts in other areas, not this one.

In this example, the seller resisted removing the draperies and much of the furniture from this master bedroom. He thought it would look bare, and that the room would not look as large because it would not be showing how much furniture it could hold. We insisted that the room would look bigger, brighter and more up-to-date, and he chose to trust us. You decide whether or not it worked!

 

If you are selling your Orlando area home, give us a call at Gloria Home Staging. We will be glad to help make your home feel like home to buyers.

www.GloriaHomeStaging.com

                             407-695-0023

         Setting your home apart

Serving the Orlando, Florida area

Home Staging is an art - not something that everyone can do well.  Let me explain.  Last night I did a listing presentation and the sellers were wondering why their home did not sell when previously listed. There were several factors involved:  (1) overpriced (2) no staging appeal and (3) errors on the feature sheet.  Staging a home makes it more appealing to the buyers looking for a home in a certain area within a certain budget.  Instead of hiring a professional home stager, the previous agent asked the sellers to declutter and they did, but to the point of where the house was basically bare of any character, charm - the WOW factor was missing.

It's very important that the sellers are provided with the right tools to help them to sell their home.  That includes:  home staging by a professional; virtual tour/photos by a professional and marketing of the home by a professional.  Great team-work makes the sale easier.

My job is to assist the sellers in selling their home and to use all the tools available to me to do so.  If things are done right i.e. pricing, condition and location there is no reason why a home won't sell.  Always use the services of a professional.