4 Tips for Effectively Staging Your Home for Sale

4 Tips for Effectively Staging Your Home for Sale You've accepted the job offer, met with the REALTOR, and are starting to get bids from moving companies. It's official—you really are selling your home and moving away! As anybody who has ever sold a home knows quite well, it takes a lot more than sticking a For Sale sign in the front yard and hoping that potential buyers will love it as much as you did. In order to get the best price for your home and pique the interest (and bidding power) of buyers, you need to take some time to stage your home so that it looks and smells—yes, smells—terrific, inviting, and worth every dollar of your asking price. The following four tips can help home sellers effectively and attractively stage their home: 1. Consider new window treatments Take a look at the various window coverings in your home and ask yourself if they look new, clean, and in excellent condition. If the answer to any of these questions is an honest "no," then consider getting some new window treatments. Home window treatments are available in a variety of textures and colors, and can make a huge difference in the quality of light that enters a room. 2. Upgrade your tile with paint As HGTV notes, bathrooms have been known to help sell a home, but old and shabby tile will definitely steer potential buyers away faster than you can say "avocado and almond tile." Because replacing tile can be on the costly side, sellers can repaint them. After coating the tiles with a primer (be sure you purchase one that is marked "high adhesion"), paint the tiles with a ceramic epoxy coating. This relatively easy and low-cost job can really help update the look of the bathroom without having to spend a ton of money on new tile. 3. Tone down an old fireplace Sure, that brick fireplace in the living or family room looks great during the holidays when it's festooned with stockings and the various trimmings of the season, but the rest of the year it really doesn't do much for the look of the room. To lessen its visual impact, try adding a thin coat of paint to the bricks. In order to avoid the mortar, you do have to paint one brick at a time, which can be time-consuming. But the pay-off of painting your fireplace is well worth your patience when you have a new neutral focal point in your room. One additional tip: to make sure the fireplace blends in as much as possible, choose a color that closely matches the surrounding walls. 4. Simmer some apples Nothing will turn off home buyers faster than a musty, moldy, smoky, and/or any other type of undesirable smell. Even the cleanest home can often benefit from the addition of a nice aroma. Shortly before your open house, place some sliced apples and cinnamon sticks in a sauce pan on the stove, and let them simmer. The delicious smell will be sure to tempt potential buyers to spend even more time—and hopefully money—on your home.

For Those Who Held On, Equity Has Returned

 Home prices surged 11.3 percent this year compared to 2012, the latest
housing data by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) shows. 

  A rise in home prices has pulled more home owners out from underwater
with the return of equity this year, NAR notes.

 On NAR's Economists' Outlook blog, researchers explain that a borrower who
bought a median-priced home in 2004 and held it for nine years - the average
tenure in a home - would now have $28,114 in equity (this includes combined
price appreciation and paying down mortgage principle).

 A home owner who purchased a median priced home in 2012 would have
more than $23,000 in equity.

 Home owners who purchased in 2006 and 2007 - during the peak of the market
- have faced the biggest falls in home prices, but NAR researchers note they
are "nearly in positive equity" territory. A home owner who bought a home in
2006, for example, and owned through 2012 would have been underwater by
about $28,200. However, by this year, that downfall has lessened to $4,700.
 Home owners who bought since 2007 are mostly in positive equity, according to
NAR research.

 A study released last week by CoreLogic showed that more home
owners were regaining equity. About 13 percent of all homes with a mortgage
remain in negative equity by the end of the third quarter, compared to 14.7
percent who stood in negative equity at the end of the second quarter.