I’m Obsessed with How a Stager’s Tiny Tweaks Transformed This Home (for $700!)
Putting up a “For Sale” sign can be emotional for some sellers. Even if they’ve bought a new home they love, it can be difficult to move on from their current one, especially if they’ve lived there for decades.
Staging — even when done minimally — can help reframe that mindset (and help fetch a much higher price for your home).
Mattie Sheppard, Strategic Interior Design and Cleaning Advisor at HouseCashin and Founder and Principal of Perfectly Pictured Decluttering & Staging Experts, feels that the staging work done on one recently sold Florida property was well worth the effort.
Cleaning and decluttering go hand in hand with staging when prepping a home for sale, says Sheppard. Skip one in favor of another, and buyers will notice. Since Sheppard is a pro in all three areas, the seller of one particular property in Florida was in good hands to get the property ready to sell.
It helped a lot — and it always does — that the seller was motivated and understood the power of staging to woo buyers. The seller had already painted the home in Sherwin-Williams’ Agreeable Gray, a color touted by many stagers for its versatility. The carpets were in good shape, but the seller had them steam-cleaned for a bigger impact.
The biggest obstacle was that there was quite a lot to declutter from the home. Decluttering a home for viewers may seem obvious to some, but it’s so fundamental to proper home viewing that there are even rules named after it — like the “1/5th rule.”
So, the seller got to work donating items and packing or putting others in storage. Sheppard’s advice if you’re reluctant to get rid of possessions? “Just start.” It’s fine to start slowly — in fact, she encourages taking it just one room at a time — but get those piles going for items that will be sold or donated and those that will be stored or packed. “Don’t be afraid to let stuff go,” she says. “If you haven’t used it in two years, let it go.”
Then, it was Sheppard’s turn to stage. While she loves the challenge of staging an entire property, she particularly likes to stage the bedroom. Her goal was to make it look so cozy and inviting that “when you go into that room, you don’t want to leave.” She added new bedding and sheer curtains that let more light in, and ended up replacing all the cloth curtains throughout the entire home with sheer ones because the effect was so dramatic.
The seller used most of her existing items, and Sheppard brought in wall decor, living room furniture and lamps, linens, curtains, and a few other small items. In the dining room, Sheppard kept the seller’s table and chairs, but removed the table leaf to create more negative space. Another bedroom used as a sewing room was transformed into a home office, with Sheppard simply adding a desk and some accessories, to give buyers a different sense on how to use the space. When it comes to staging with furniture, she says, “Use something small, because you want to show off the space.”
Sheppard didn’t stage the small galley kitchen but she did declutter it, which made enough of an impact. The same went for the bathroom — she removed an over-the-toilet storage unit and replaced it with a basket filled with rolled white towels for a resort-like look.
It worked. Not one, but two buyers felt they could see themselves in the home, and so a small bidding war ensued. Sheppard bet her husband that the home would sell in three weeks. On Day 16, she won her bet.
The seller came out as a big winner, too. It cost just $700 to stage the home, which, Sheppard confirmed, the seller recouped with the sale. While it was her staging and the buyer’s willingness to prepare the property that sealed the deal, Sheppard also gave credit to the home itself; she describes the aesthetics and the layout as “absolutely beautiful.”
“It just needed a little touch of creativity so it could be shown in the best light,” says Sheppard.
Further Reading
I Tried the 90/90 Rule and My Closet Is Now Fully Decluttered
We Tested (and Rated!) Every Sofa at West Elm — Here Are the Best for Every Type of Need
