Photo of staged living room — *photo by blue octopus media*

The purpose of showing your home is to hook a buyer. You want the buyers to come through your house and be wowed - so wowed in fact, that they’re ready to make an offer! You’ll have one chance to make a great first impression on the potential buyers, so make sure to follow these five helpful tips to make it count!

Make sure that you don’t neglect the outside of your home. Curb appeal can make or break the odds of someone even bothering to get out of the car to come in. If they pull up and see a home with a lawn that obviously needs edging and has an unkempt flower bed, they’re going to wonder what else hasn’t been cared for properly. You want the outside of your home to be spotless! Clean the siding, the windows, and the doors. Make sure there are no dirt smudges, no cobwebs and that anything that needs painting has been spiffed up.

living room — 02.

Take *yourself* out of the house

You want to take out all of the personal stuff. Remove the family photos from the wall or tables Put away the knickknacks. You want the home to look neutral so that the potential buyers can look at your home and picture it as themselves living there. Everything should be as neutral as possible in terms of personal items.

Renovated Kitchen — 03.

Remove all the extra clutter you see at *first glance*

It’ll amaze you at how much stuff you’ve accumulated over the years. Some of it might be important to you, but that doesn’t mean that your potential buyers should see it. When you have clutter, it shrinks the living space of the house. It makes it look and feel cramped and smaller. Homeowners can get something called house blindness. They’ve lived in the home for so long with the same clutter that they don’t even really see it anymore. But a stranger will always notice! So clean out your house to make the home feel as spacious as possible.

04.

If you have a pet, You will want to *remove all signs of it*

Which means no cat litter box, no dog to jump on anyone, no food sitting around in a dish. Your home should not have any pet odors. Having a clean house that’s odor free is a big selling point. You don’t want to lose a possible deal just because they can smell your pet’s presence or your pet makes a bad impression!

You can hire a professional or you can even do it yourself! Stage your living areas in a way that shows off your home to its best advantage. You can even rent furniture if need be if you will be the one staging. Someone who knows how to stage a house knows how to play up the best features of your home and knows what to bring in or get rid of to make the entire house appeal to the perfect buyer.

First impressions are HUGE! When showing you home to potential buyers, by following the simple tips above you will be well on your way to making a great impression and, hopefully, receiving multiple offers! (And if you are at all anxious about this important step, just reach out to a trusted real estate agent in your area who can help guide you through this process!)