Tips for staging for sale

[kirinm]

What do we need to do? We've declutterred although will try to remove more if we can. Concerned about being too minimalist - also virtually impossible with a 5 year old.

I am rubbish at making beds look inviting - do I need to buy specific coloured bedding?

Garden is looking in tip top shape, we had the flat repainted a couple of months ago but it is all white.

Do you mean for the photos or for viewings?

Are you in a desirable area and pricing sensibly?

We didn’t worry about buying special bedding - just made sure it was clean and looked decent.

Put as much stuff away / out of sight as you can for both photos and viewings. Have as little as possible out on the kitchen sides, no pairs of shoes lying around, that kind of thing. If that means shoving things in the car before viewings then so be it. For example we’d got very behind on laundry and hid it in the car during viewings.

Keep personal stuff to a minimum as well - for example we took everything off the fridge.

I would say make sure the estate agents move your bins out of the photos as ours left one in, but our house still sold in a week.

It's kind of a desirable area - I mean, we want to stay in it just upgrade to a house. It'll be FTBs that we are aiming for. In London so everything is expensive but we aren't going to be asking for anymore than what other places have been going for.

I was actually thinking photographs but it'll need to be viewings as well. I'm hoping we will be on holiday when viewings start so more chance of the place staying tidy (although will make the morning we fly fun)!

I don't know if you have control over how photos are taken, but if you do, ask for them to be realistic.

As a FTB in London, it's been so hard turning up at places where the photos were so stretched!
Even with floor plans, the pictures are important.

One was so stretched the bonnet of the car was 3 times the length it should have been!

I hate it when they stretch the photos! So ridiculous.

You don't happen to be looking in SE London do you? 😉

We dressed ours - or rather we totally got rid of all of our surplus stuff- I would say 30% went at least.

I then chose the nicest items and bought a few more to display. Changed a few personal pictures to more mainstream but still a bit quirky. Less is more, for example a shelf might have had 10-15 books and 8 ornaments before- but now it will have 2-3 statement pieces.

Everything is in cupboards- no clutter- even in the kitchen. The house can look too small if stuff is out everywhere.

I bought some great small folding metal tables - really cheap from Argos (about £20 each) which let you put 4-5 items nicely displayed on them and got rid of any bulky furniture.

We also re-carpeted throughout and had 80% of the house painted white. It does look amazing and had multiple offers in a few days but it also feels like living in a show home.

Oddly it has helped with separation from the house which we have had for 20 years and are downsizing as I dont feel quite the same about it now.

I was. Early stages of buying on the boundary of SE and CR postcode.

My estate agent refused to use any kind of fancy lenses - had the theory you want the photos look worse than the house does in person, so viewers are always pleasantly surprised!
Goes against everything other people advise, but that estate agents are good at getting fast sales, so maybe there's something in it! Although, we are a small, relatively desirable town with very limited options on the market, so buyers will probably view everything that comes up in the right price-range regardless of pictures, so that theory might only work here.

We put about half the furniture in the garage and an extraordinary amount of DSs’ stuff in the loft. DH touched up paint in places. The estate agent was very helpful.

Re beds: Just get the iron out. Crumpled beds look rubbish no matter how new the bedding.

Put the loo lid down. Tidy and clean. Declutter surfaces (and generally decluttering before a move is a good idea).

Take your own photos - does anything jar? If so then adjust that for the official photos. My friend followed the estate agent room to room, tweaking for the photos (eg fewer coats on coat hooks to visually declutter) then putting it back. Things that look fine in real life can look 'bad' in a photo.

I think that sounds a much more sensible approach.

It would have saved me a huge water journey when visiting a house smaller, no working boiler, skirting boards removed, walls back to bare plaster etc.
None of which was in photos or description.

It sounds as if you’ve done the main stuff, garden looking great, fresh coat of paint, declutter etc.
Clean windows and clean grout and silicone in kitchens and bathrooms makes a place look cared for and an easy fix if necessary.
It might help to get a good friend to take an objective look at how you’re using the space as sometimes you get so used to the layout that suits you that you don’t see that it might not be showing the space to its advantage.
Just a small example, we used to keep a coat rack in the corner of one room which was handy but we had space to hang coats in the understairs cupboard and it did look much more spacious once we got rid of it.
It was the estate agent who suggested we got rid as it made it look like we didn’t have anywhere to hang coats.