House Staging

[ProcrastinatorsAnonymous]

Tips to stage / style 5 bed London property for sale, please! Fashionable area. Likely buyer = family with young kids... To do list below, but am I missing anything? What (easily fixed!) things might put you off buying a house?

Top tips massively appreciated - but things that can be actioned in under 1 week. We've already done a major declutter and repainted kitchen, hall and front of house.

Deep clean whole house - obvs
Front door paint touched up & doorway cleaned
Front path jet washed
Window box
New door mat
Bins tidied out of the way
Shoes & Coats removed from hall
Clear kitchen counters
Fresh flowers
Plants
No dish cloths / tea towels etc out
Windows cleaned
Patio jet washed & garden tidied
Pet dishes etc away
Bathroom toiletries hidden
Fresh white towels
Fresh fruit in fruit bowl
Fresh bedding / pillows

Take photos of each room from the doorway and look critically at each one. Does it say 'this is a house you can move right into, have loads of storage space and can see myself having a lovely party with friends round'. Same for the garden, you want to portray them sitting on the patio drinking coffee and smiling at their children playing.
Look for things you have screened out mentally like stuff on worktops/ top of cupboards, clutter in bathrooms, dirty patio furniture or a dull garden, piles of kids toys, rooms where you feel like you can't move or can't see what it is.
Do you have a very honest friend who would come round and check for smells etc and look at the rooms and say what they would do?
Have a look at similar houses locally and how they are presented. Things in another persons house will stand out more to you

Cleaning / decluttering obviously good but I wouldn’t go overboard especially don’t spend a lot. You’ll have to maintain it! Most buyers are savvy enough to see through the aesthetic and are going to be very cautious about offers. So of cours make the effort but don’t be disappointed if you get low offers at the moment. We’ve just offered on and got accepted (in a very popular Sussex town) and the presentation of the house just didn’t factor in our decision

If you've got dogs air the house as much as you can before viewings - every house has a 'smell' the owner doesn't notice and one of the strongest is often dogs. If you want to mask any smells, do it really subtly as anything noticeable would make me suspicious of what it's covering up (damp etc).

Don't massively over fuss, sounds like you're on it already! - good luck :)

Declutter 10 times over- rent a storage unit and put all the stuff you don’t need in it including unnecessary furniture.

Karate chop cushions.
Large wall clock.
Letters on shelves spelling things like "COSY" and "HOME".
Large vases with a display of twigs inside.
Stage spilt tub of lego in playroom to make it looked "lived in".

Also, the new build interior design classic of buying special small furniture to fit in the rooms to make them look bigger

You can overthink these things.

Most buyers - especially for a 5-bed in a good area of London - won't be swayed by 'staging'.

But de-cluttering does help make sure that rooms and spaces don't appear smaller than they are, and viewing a clean house is always preferable to one that isn't; and it sounds like you're on top of both of those things.

Given the current market, a bigger issue may be making sure you get the pricing right when compared to similar properties that are actually selling (as opposed to listing at prices reflecting last year's peak prices when interest rates were virtually zero and just sitting there).

Good luck!!

Thanks for responses! Significant amount of stuff has already gone to a storage unit - more going this weekend. While staging doesn't alter the bones of a house, if you are selling somewhere that has already been developed (as we are) then you're not selling potential - you're selling the finished product - so I think it does matter.

@GasPanic - I of course have a "Live Laugh Love" sign in distressed wood in every room.