Are you planning to sell your property? Arranging an open house is one of the best ways to attract potential buyers. As a seller, you should make your house look as good as possible. Of course, the main goal is to decorate the house for its full potential, and not to hide its flaws. However, as someone not in the real estate industry, staging your house, like other display homes, can be complicated and overwhelming.
In this article, we’ll give you some tips on preparing for an open house for the first time.
1. Deep Clean and Declutter
For the buyers, a clean home means the owner must’ve been taking care of the house properly. So, at least weeks before the open house, you should deep clean and declutter. It’s better to declutter first. When doing so, you should gather all the items in a room, and prepare three boxes labelled with keep, throw, and donate. For every item you pick, decide which of the three boxes it belongs to. Once you’re done with decluttering, the next step is to clean every part of the house.
2. Stage Each Room
Staging is a great way to showcase the full potential of the house. It also helps buyers to imagine how they want to personalise the property. For instance, if you neutrally stage the house, the buyers can use it as the base for their decorations. However, don’t hesitate to add a pop-up colour and other accent pieces, such as paintings, flowers, and throw pillows.
In addition, each room should have its own thing going on, but you should still feel as if it belongs to the whole house.
3. Highlight Key Features
What are the best features of the house? While planning the staging of the house, identifying its key features is essential to spend more time on how to highlight them. Usually, the common areas are the best features of the house, including the kitchen, living room, and dining area.
But how are you going to feature these areas? You can start with the architectural elements, like the ceiling and arches. Next, utilise the space more efficiently. Whether the room has plenty of space or not, the right placement of furniture and appliances can significantly make it look great.
4. Improve Lighting
Have you ever tried trying out clothes in stores, and you thought everything looked good on you, but once you bought it and wore it at home, something seemed wrong? It’s usually because of the lighting. Good lighting can significantly transform something into amazing. And it’s not just in clothes, but also when making movies, and staging display homes or houses preparing for showing.
Investing in good lighting can be one of the things you should consider. You should have a combination of ambient, accent, and task lights.
5. Pay Attention to Kerb’s Appeal
Although everyone is usually inside the house, don’t underestimate the power of the curb appeal. Besides, it’s the first thing buyers and the neighbours will notice, so if it’s not attractive, you might lose some interested parties.
Since first impressions usually last, be sure to invest in fixing the windows and repainting the exterior and the door. Additionally, if there’s room for a garden or outdoor activities, don’t forget to update all the elements.
6. Address Repairs and Maintenance Issues
Addressing maintenance issues and repairs is another thing you should keep in mind. This includes the doors, windows, paint, and faucets. If you don’t fix them before the open house, it can be a turnoff for the buyers. Besides, if you can’t handle these small issues, what about the major maintenance problems?
7. Add Finishing Touches
Small details can make or break the overall experience of potential buyers. It doesn’t just say something about your home management practises, but also as someone to have business with.
For instance, you add scents to the house using potpourri or scented candles, bake some cookies, and print brochures. Put yourself in the buyer’s perspective, and ask yourself, “What are the elements that can help seal the deal?”.
8. Ensure Safety and Comfort
Although your main goal is to find as many buyers as possible and sell the house, you should still ensure the safety of everyone. In doing so, you should ensure that every project in the house is already done, provide sanitisers at the entrance, and control the temperature of the house.
The more comfortable the potential buyers are, the higher the chance they’ll stay, be curious, and ask for more information.
Final Thoughts
The preparation for an open house can be stressful and daunting, especially if you have a lot of things to address. However, once you’re done, and successfully obtain a lot of interested buyers, all your hard work will be worth it.
Let us know how your open house went by commenting below!
