Real Estate Staging - How to Sell or Rent it Now

Real estate staging generally either intimidates people or sounds too basic to be bothered with, but in a depressed market, sellers and landlords need every advantage they can get. Gone are the days when listing your home for sale or rent will bring frenzied buyers and rental applications flooding your property, so it's time to start thinking about how to set your property apart from the dozen others listed for sale or rent on your street.

Method 1: Visual Staging

We're going to start basic, and get progressively more subtle from there. To begin, is your house clean (not "broom clean, whatever that means, but spotlessly clean)? A clean house makes a strong impression, period.

Landscaping is a big one too, as the outside of the house is first thing any buyer or rental applicant will see. First impressions will shade every thought about your house that they have afterward, so make their first impression a good one.

Before painting, consider carefully what colors you want to use. White is sterile, and all too often reminiscent of hospitals. Warmth is what sells, so find a way to subtly include warm paint colors (yellows, reds, oranges, etc.) in the house, but be careful of overdoing it, as no one wants to live in a clown house.

Additional ways to add warmth to the house include carpets, curtains, drapes, trim colors, door mats, and anything else you can think of to make the place feel homey. If you're up to the task, it helps to coordinate with those warm colors you painted, too.

Furniture can help, but don't sweat it if you don't have extra furniture lying around, because it's not worth spending money on new furniture just for staging.

It does, however, pay to spend money on a flat screen television, and mount it on the living room wall. It makes an immediate impression when potential buyers or rental applicants walk through the front door, and they don't cost an arm and a leg anymore.

Auditory Staging

All right, we're getting further from the fundamentals and into a more subtle kind of staging here. Auditory staging serves two purposes: 1. drowning out background noise, and 2. creating an emotional response in potential buyers and rental applicants.

When you're working on the landscaping, consider a noise-reducing fence or hedge to cut down on traffic noises, your neighbor's blaring rap music, and any other irritating noise from outside. While you're at it, one of my personal favorites is a fountain (which can be installed inside, alternatively), because it drowns out noise and sets a relaxing mood, and they're surprisingly inexpensive.

Inside, turn on that new TV when you first enter the property to show it off, and then leave it on. But here's the trick: you MUST have the channel and volume pre-set to be relaxing. I'm a fan of jazz or lounge music (think Sinatra), because it invokes nostalgia in most adults.

Olfactory Staging

Smells are a tricky beast to use, so be forewarned, but they can be extremely useful for putting people at ease without them ever knowing that you're pulling their strings. The trick is to be consistent, and subtle; mixing a lot of strong smells is a recipe for disaster. Choose one smell for the whole house, and make sure it's not overpowering.

One option is flowers, which are terrific because they're also visual, but they're high maintenance, which generally makes them more trouble than it's worth unless you buy them specifically for one occasion, like an open house.

Alternatively, you might consider candles, plug-ins, incense, or air freshener, but only use air freshener if you absolutely have to cover up a brutally offensive odor. Personally, I think spices make the most universally likable smell (do you know anyone who doesn't like cinnamon?), but do whatever works for you.

The bottom line with all of this is that some way, some how, you HAVE to set your home or rental property apart from all of the rest, or you'll never score a single buyer or rental application. Be subtle, play the violin with their heartstrings, and you'll have yourself a sales contract or rental application within no time.