Your Guide to Staging Your Home For the Holidays
Staging your home for the holidays helps showcase your home’s true potential. You can hire a professional stager, or you can opt to do this for yourself; it’s a pretty crucial part of selling your home though. Staged homes compete on the market much better than homes which haven’t had any decor TLC. Preparing the property for sale includes cleaning, de-cluttering, updating and repairing, all the while showcasing the furniture, accessories, art, and light to help highlight the best features of your home.
Before you deck the halls with boughs of holly, see what kind of holiday decor can actually help your home sell! Don’t let the thought of selling your home during the winter months turn you into a grinch. You can create a festive buyer-friendly home with some seasonal staging tips.
Clean First, Decorate Later
Almost anyone who decorates their home for the holidays will do a cleaning sweep beforehand. No one wants to put up decorations on a dusty mantle! With that being said, if you’re selling your home around the holidays, it’s even more important to do a thorough cleaning. Take your time and do a thorough, deep clean of your home before staging your home for the Holidays.
While you’re cleaning, you have the perfect opportunity to clear clutter and depersonalize the interior of your home too. It’s best to remove holiday cards, personalized ornaments, and named stockings. When there’s too much clutter in a home, it’s tough for the potential buyers to see themselves living there. Offer as much open space as you can to allow them to picture themselves moving in!
You can add in some festive flair, but keeping it classic, minimal and simple will help if you’re selling your home during the holidays.
Create a Cozy Atmosphere
There’s nothing like walking into a home to be greeted by the smell of freshly baked cookies, twisted peppermint, or spiced cider. You can use scents to create a festive vibe in your home, which is more appealing than overdoing the decorations.
If you live in a colder area, warm your home up by turning on the heat or sparking a fire. A crackling fire is inviting, and the warmth will help make the potential buyers feel at home. The fire will also add some great lighting, too. It’s important to make sure there’s ample lighting in your home to highlight the best features, which is to say lighting candles, adding soft, twinkling lights, and sparking a fire will help add to the ambiance.
Don’t be afraid to leave out cookies, Christmas treats, or holiday eats for potential home buyers too!
Complement the Current Decor
Clashing colors can be a serious turnoff. You want to make sure any holiday decorations you’re putting up compliment your home, and that they don’t take away from your current decor. Here’s a good way to think about complimenting the color palette: enhance your home’s style. If you have an earthy color scheme, decorate with rich colors like maroon, gold, and deep greens.
The right decor can draw attention to the best features of your home. Accentuate strong points of your home by identifying what you want to show off. If you have a beautiful, open floor plan with high ceilings, adding a taller Christmas tree can bring potential buyer’s attention to this. If you have a great fireplace adorned with a fancy mantle, spruce it up with some evergreen garland or wintery pieces. Be sure to keep it tasteful, minimal, and elegant.
Keep Up the Curb Appeal
One of the most important things to do when you’re putting your home on the market is to keep up the curb appeal. The exterior of a home is the first thing a potential buyer sees, so why not make a wonderful first impression?
Play up the best features of your yard and home by stringing classic white lights. They’re elegant, tasteful, and simple. You can draw attention to porch columns, gorgeous trees or greenery, and any other strong point of the exterior of your home.
While classic is the best approach, if your neighborhood goes all out for the holidays you may consider turning your decor up a notch. If you live in a very festive neighborhood, you don’t want your home to stand out as the resident grinch! But remember: less is always more.
Remember Neutrality is Important
The holidays are a wonderful time of year, but not everyone celebrates Christmas. Keeping this in mind is critical, because if you’re staging your home for the Holidays with religious decor and a potential buyer doesn’t celebrate that holiday, you could be endangering the sale of your house. Be an “equal opportunity” decorator, sprucing up your home with seasonal accents instead of religious ones. Try using snowflakes, winter branches, animals like reindeer, penguins or owls, and greenery like garland or evergreen swags.
If you ask a realtor, they may tell you to keep your home on the market during the Yuletide because that way, you’ll know buyers are serious. Although there are fewer home hunters during the holidays, there are more motivated buyers. And even though it may be inconvenient to show your home at this time of year, it’s the perfect opportunity to make people feel like they’re coming home for the holidays.
Myers & Myers Real Estate
A local real estate professional is one of the best sources of information about events and attractions in their area. With their local expertise, you’ll quickly get a hang of your new city!
If you’re interested in knowing more about Albuquerque real estate, or the neighborhoods around Albuquerque like Rio Rancho, don’t hesitate to reach out! Myers and Myers Real Estate is here to help. You can contact us at [email protected], call us at (505) 401-7500, or visit us online.
