Continuing with Steven's list of recommendations….

Staging

Professional "staging" is being more frequently used when sellers want to maximize their home's assets.

Buyers fall in love with a “homey” atmosphere. A professional decorator can use your own furnishings or bring in rental furniture and add coordinates, seasonal colors and themes, dramatize the best features, and revitalize the home’s exterior curb appeal. The goal in staging is to open the home’s floor plan and give the buyer that “I can see how we could…” feel.

Stagers offer a variety of services. Some will work with your own furnishings and just reorder, rearrange, and bring in accessories. Some will offer a consultation at a flat fee and offer room-by-room suggestions and a “to do” list that the homeowner can implement.

There's nothing off limits. Recommendations can include minor things from decluttering, use of color, throw pillows, plants, faux paint, different fixtures, cleaning, etc. The goal though is to find what will help your home show well, without reinventing the wheel.

Some stagers can give you recommendations and provide coordination services to direct you to painters, cleaners, and storage facilities they work with.

There’s also a full-service staging, often used for vacant homes, where the decorator brings in furnishings, appliances, artwork, window dressings, throw rugs, kitchen ware, and the works. In a full-service staging sometimes the entire house is staged; other times the family room, living room, master, and bathrooms are staged and the guest bedrooms and other smaller areas are left vacant. Full-service staging usually comes with a design fee and a monthly furniture rental fee.

Much depends on the overall marketability of your home. A full staging (furniture and accessories) on a 3/2 home may cost $2800 to $3500 for the initial month, and then a flat rate or rental for additional months following (usually a percentage of the initial month cost). Don't overdo staging. Consider it in moderation. You don't want to rack up a $10,000 staging bill to net $12,000 more sales price four months down the road, when $500 consultation could have done the trick and sold the home for list price in 30 days. Keep in mind that time is money (and mortgage payments).