If selling your home is in your future, you’ve got some important work to do ahead of you. There’s so much more to selling your home than just planting a for sale sign in your front yard. It means more than taking a few pictures of the place to post online, too. Here’s a checklist of nine important things to do before you sell your home.

Before You Sell Your Home

Invest in some curb appeal

The first thing prospective buyers see of your home should entice them to want to see more.

Stand on the front walk and examine your home closely. Look at it through a prospective buyer’s eyes. How does it look? Does it need paint? Are the gutters rusting? If you have a garden, is it overgrown with weeds and grass? These are relatively easy fixes.

Do a clean sweep

You know the saying, “Less is more”? This is so true when it comes to getting your house ready to show.

Declutter all visible areas first. Then move to behind closed doors: closets, drawers, and cupboards. Yes, even behind closed doors. No space is off-limits to curious buyers. Note: Hide or lock up your valuables before your home is shown.

Donate, pack up, give, or throw away excess belongings and stuff. Potential buyers may worry the house won’t have enough space for their belongings and stuff.

Plus, you’ll have less to deal with when it’s actually time to move.

Remove potential buyer distractions

This step goes hand-in-hand with the clean sweep. Buyers need to be able to visualize themselves and their family living in your house. So pack up your personal items, family photos, artwork, and furniture. Anything that could distract potential buyers from visualizing themselves living this space needs to go.

Paint walls with a neutral color

It’s rare that anyone will hate a neutral color. Light, neutral colors allow potential buyers to envision what the walls will look like with the paint color they like.

And while you’re at it, pay attention to the baseboards. Scuff marks and chipping make a home look neglected.

Fix what’s broke

Well, fix loose handles, missing lightbulbs, dripping faucets, and so forth. Buyers tend to wonder what else may be broken if these small things aren’t taken care of.

Clean, clean, clean

And then clean some more. Bathrooms, tile, counters, showers, tubs, windows, and floors should shine.

Invigorate your home with staging

Home stagers evaluate your home’s condition and the belongings inside. Their goal is to make your home appealing to the highest number of potential buyers and selling your home quickly and for more money.

Scope out our neighborhood

Look for houses for sale in your area and search the internet. Visit open houses that are comparable to your home, also. This will help you choose the best selling price for your home.

Choose a great real estate agent

A great real estate agent makes all the difference in the selling process.

Many people think they can sell their home themselves versus paying an agent. But resist the urge to save money and pocket the cash. For Sale by Owners (FSBO’s) almost always turn into disasters, sacrificing both your time and money.

A great real estate agent knows the current market and can suggest the price to list your home for. They have a great marketing plan for the sale of your home.

Charles D’Alessandro, your great Brooklyn real estate agent

Before you sell your home, contact Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn Real Estate Agent with Fillmore Real Estate. Call (718) 253-9600 ext. 206 or email me at [email protected] today. With over 30 years of real estate experience in Brooklyn, I can guide you through each step of the selling process, from listing to closing.

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Charles D’Alessandro
Your Brooklyn Real Estate Agent
718-253-9600 ext. 206
[email protected]

Home staging is nothing new. And staging your home for sale is remarkably beneficial. It’s also necessary if you want to sell your home quickly because today’s market is much more challenging than it used to be. You may already be aware of traditional home staging. But have you ever heard of virtual home staging?

What is Traditional Home Staging?

Wikipedia defines it as “the act of preparing a private residence for sale in the real estate marketplace. The goal of staging is to make a home appealing to the highest number of potential buyers, thereby selling a property more swiftly and for more money. Staging techniques focus on improving a property’s appeal by transforming it into a welcoming, attractive product that anyone might want. People usually use arts, painting, accessories, lights, greenery, and carpet to stage the home, to give potential buyers a more attractive first impression of the property.”

2 Types of Traditional Home Staging

There are two types of traditional home staging:

1. Owner-occupied staging – seller is living in the home while it is on the market; stager uses the homeowner’s belongings to prepare the home for sale
2. Vacant staging – the most expensive for sellers; stager rents furniture and accessories to dress up an empty space

How Does Home Staging Benefit the Seller?

Many confuse staging with decorating. And many fight against the process and recommendations of their home stager because the process calls for detachment. It requires detaching yourself emotionally from your home. But if you know the benefits of staging your home for sale, the transformation of your home with home staging is fun.

• Potential buyers can picture your home as their home more easily
• Home staging sells your home faster, 75 percent faster than homes that are not
• You can get a better price for the sale of your home

The job of a home stager is to present your home in its best possible light. They work with what you have, rearranging and reallocating. Sometimes they instruct you to move or pack or store furniture. And sometimes they even bring in furniture and decorations to enhance the selling points of your home.

So don’t cause your home stager grief. Work with them. Your home stager has the biggest benefit at heart, to sell your home quickly and for the best price.

What is Virtual Home Staging?

Now that you know what home staging is and the benefits it provides to you as a home seller, what is virtual home staging, and how does that work?

Virtual home staging creates digital, realistic images of furniture in graphic editors and adds them to empty rooms in your home for sale. This helps potential buyers to better visualize your home and the spaces inside it once they’re furnished. This is extremely helpful to potential buyers when used in brochures or flyers. Potential buyers are able to view rooms empty and compare those empty rooms when they are furnished digitally.

Benefits of Virtual Home Staging

In addition to the benefits of traditional home staging, there are two major advantages that virtual home staging has over traditional home staging: time and cost.

• Empty listings that are stuck on the market sell quickly after virtual home staging
• Virtual home staging is more than ninety percent less expensive than traditional home staging
• Your listing is more professionally represented and generates more interest when it is staged virtually

BoxBrownie.com offers competitive rates for professional virtual home staging. Their outputs are photorealistic, so you aren’t able to tell whether a property is physically staged or not.

Every home can benefit from some form of staging. And you can be as involved as you want depending on your needs and budget.

And although professional is inconvenient and a bit unnerving, selling your home in the shortest amount of time and for the most money is worth it.

Is your home empty? Has it been sitting on the market for a while? Want it to sell quickly? Call Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn Real Estate Agent with Fillmore Real Estate at (718) 253-9600 ext.206 or email [email protected]. He will advise you on virtual home staging and give you an action plan to follow to move your home from “For Sale” to SOLD!

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 Charles D’Alessandro

Your Brooklyn Real Estate Agent

718-253-9600 ext. 206

[email protected]

Once you list your home for sale, keeping it clean, bright and clutter-free is a given. But did you know that staging your home increases the value in the buyers’ eyes? It also helps you get a higher price for your home. It’s a proven fact. Sell your home faster and for more money with home staging.

What is Home Staging?

Home staging is more than thoroughly cleaning, hauling out clutter, fixing aesthetic issues and making your home bright with lots of light. Staging a home:

• helps prospective buyers visualize themselves in the home
• has an effect on the buyer’s view of the home
• makes an impact in several ways for the buyer
• helps buyers visualize the property as a future home
• makes prospective buyers more willing to walk through a home they saw online

How Much Does It Cost?

Home staging costs an average of $675. Some real estate agents include home staging as part of their services.

If you choose not to have the whole home staged, stage the living room. It’s the number one room to stage. Second is the kitchen. Ranking third, fourth and fifth are the master bedroom, dining room, and bathroom.

Is it Worth the Effort and Investment?

Buyers typically offer a 6 to 10 percent increase in the value of a staged home. The impact and the value home staging bring to both home buyers and sellers make it worth the effort and investment most definitely!

Home Staging is About Your Home, not You

A professional home stager is hired to bring out the best in your home. Don’t take her recommendations personally. Commit to marketing your home for sale and be prepared to detach emotionally from your home and belongings. How we live is not how we sell a home, and therein lies a great challenge! Following staging recommendations to a tee and keeping your home in show-ready condition will sell your home faster and for more money. Trust your agent, your home stager, and the process!

Working with Charles D’Alessandro gives buyers, sellers, and investors the advantage they need to succeed in today’s challenging market. Charles knows what buyers want and how to best market and stage a home for sale.

Home staging is an excellent tool to give your home a little extra push to sell faster and for more money. Contact Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn real estate agent with Fillmore Real Estate at (718) 253-9700 ext. 206 or email [email protected] today.