Staging and Selling

Now what? Sell the house. Ugh. I loved that house.  Not everything about it, but the big living room, new appliances, big patio, pergola, and new backyard landscaping? Yes. I loved that. Sigh.

We had a wonderful real estate agent who we had used twice before. Met with him and spoke about our situation and goals for the sale. He told us that there'd weren't a lot of comps in the neighborhood our size that were completely move-in ready-which was a good thing. We were looking at pricing on the higher end of our range for financial reasons and for the fact that we had done so many updates (wood, tile, trim, bathrooms, appliances, pergola,  patio, etc.).

He let us know average market time in the LBK was about 60 days with closing around 75 days. We were looking at exactly 60 until my last day of work and proposed moving day. A little tighter than we had hoped, but we were ready.

He was on board and gave us a few things to work on before we listed. These were minor things like paint touch-up, replacing our standard vanity mirror with a new framed mirror, and checking light bulbs.

After those minor repairs, we started in on the cleaning/staging/storing leg of our adventure. Of course, I was worried about making the house perfect. Hoping to make an easy sale so we didn't have overlap in two cities. I also wanted to get everything set because we knew Travis would be moving to start his job before I moved down. 

Here's a few of my tips for staging:

1) Get rid or move into storage 1/2 of your "stuff."
No joke. Think of it like this: the more you get rid of, the more someone will want your house. You want to show off your house, not your stuff when staging. The less "stuff" you have, the more spacious your home will feel. Empty space is good.
We rented a storage space (for what ended up to be 3 months) to store our "stuff." We allotted half of the space to "plan to keep" and half to "garage sale/craigslist."

2) Price as you go for garage sales/craigslist items.
Ugh. Who wants to think about that when you're planning a move? Trust me. Buy some neon dots, grab a sharpie, and price your heart out. It makes you decide in the moment whether you're selling it or not (lean towards sell-sell-sell). Also, prevents the mass-pricing frenzy that comes with prepping a garage sale. This also allows you to pre-sort as you stage.

3) Exchange most photo frames from personal pictures to generic scenery.
Buyers don't want your vacation pictures. They want their vacation pictures in your house. Make it easy for them to see their things in your home. I used some pictures of our succulents, sunsets, and scenery pictures to replace our family photos with. Leave your pictures in, just put the new ones in front. That way when you get to your new home, you just flip the pictures and you're good to go.

4) Clean baseboards. With a terry cloth towel and 409.
Never realized how much baseboards contribute to the "clean feeling" of a room. Turns out they do. And if you live somewhere dusty (like we did), those suckers are icky. Don't forget to clean the other frequently-missed places like window sills, fans, etc.

5) Stage what you don't initially see.
Our real estate agent told us people would open everything that wasn't locked. I took this with a grain of salt, but staged the inside of our refrigerator, freezer, junk drawer, pantry, closets, bathroom cabinets, etc. I mean, I wouldn't do that when touring a house. (Who wants to see someone else's underwear drawer? Ew.) After the first showing, my hope chest drawer was left open. That was a piece of furniture. Not for sale with the house. Tacky. Hopefully they rummaged through the freezer, too.

6) Deodorize your house.

Now, I like to think my house isn't smelly. But, I do like to cook. With garlic. All the time. Also, we have two fur-babies that, despite their cuteness, do tend to stink up the house with their -ahem-
facility partaking. We reduced down to 1 litter box, I unplugged my wallflowers, and we used a natural "home deodorizer" recipe. There's lots from the fun WS store like this one or these. Worked like a charm.



Alright! We were ready to list the house. Photographer came, signed the papers, and met our real estate agent once more. He seemed pretty pleased with how the house looked. I made my list of all the short errands I had been putting off for the last 3 weeks. These, I thought, would be my small 30-minute trips when the house was being shown. I was prepared. 

Here's the actual listing description:

Adorable 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car garage home with numerous updates and upgrades. Great backyard with pergola, recent paint, wood floors, fixtures, appliances, tile work and more. Included with the home are washer, dryer and fridge. Call for your private showing today! 

*GUSH* The first word is "adorable"! Not even really sure if I read past that at the time. 

So we listed on a Wednesday evening.

Thursday: 3 showings.

Friday: 2 showings.

Saturday: 2 showings (one that fell through).

Sunday: 0 showings.

Monday: 3 showings (at least 2 of which were repeaters).

Tuesday: Offer.

Wait. What?! I thought we had an average of 60 days? I thought I'd have to leave the house on a moments notice. But I didn't even get to run any errands! What about all the stuff I had been putting off?

Listed the house and 9 showings and 6 days later had a full cash offer willing to wait until end of June to close.

Ok. We'll move.