Effective Home Staging Tip Series #5: How to Prioritize Projects and Hire the Right Vendors

Now that you know what upgrades are expected in your neighborhood and within your price range, it's time to talk about how to prioritize the projects and hire the right vendors to help you maximize profits overall.With the information that you compiled from Tips #2, 3 & 4, you now have to decide which ones are the most important to do, which ones you can do yourself and which ones you should probably outsource. When it comes to which ones are the most important, let me help you prioritize the top two. Cleaning and decluttering is by far the most important. If you do nothing else, you have to at least take care of these two things. Now when I say cleaning, I don’t mean just your typical cleaning. It has to be roll up your sleeves, get down on your knees kind of cleaning. Now, be honest with yourself. If you’re not a good housekeeper, this is the first thing you should outsource. Let’s be real here…there are things that you may not have even thought about cleaning that you should be happy that someone else is willing to do for you, for a nominal fee.I remember one particular property that I worked on where I actually told the Realtor not to hire me. She had an extremely limited budget. Mind you, it had been a rental and it needed the “works”. Upon seeing it, I recommended, she save her money on staging and hire a cleaner. The place was awful! Long story short, I still ended up staging the front rooms for her and I heard that the owners spent 3 hours negotiating the housecleaning fee. PLEASE…it is worth EVERY PENNY to have someone spit shine your property for you. Nothing scares a buyer away faster than a nasty, dirty house. Decluttering covers A LOT in the staging process. This includes inside, outside, every nook and cranny. It’s amazing how much one household can accumulate in a short amount of time. Add a couple of kids to the mix and you’ve multiplied that significantly. Just remember, your goal is to sell the house which means you’ll be moving some time in the near future. You might as well start packing now. While you’re at it, get rid of a few (hundred) things you didn’t need and won’t be needing in the new house. You’ll thank yourself later.Obviously, we don’t have enough time to go into detail about everything else that needs to be done, but you’ll want to look at your list, figure out what you can do that won’t cost you anything, what you absolutely have to do because you’ll most likely lose a sale or not get any offers because of it, like leaky faucets, unfinished projects, unmarketable wall colors, broken doors, and the like, and see what you can upgrade or fix yourself (within a reasonable time frame) and the rest should be left to the experts or for the sake of time, be hired out. Remember, you want to prepare your home for sale, not be overwhelmed with a project that has an open ended completion date. Set a date and work within that timeframe.In my self-guided program, "The Do-It-Yourself Home Buyer Attraction System," you will get additional resources to help you identify what’s most important, what you can and should do yourself, and resources for hiring experts to help you meet your goals.Stay tuned for #6 in our Effective Home Staging Tip Series where we will dive into Setting the Stage for Your Home Selling Success...one of my favorite subjects and probably the part you’ve been waiting for!INVITATION: Visit us at http://HomeBuyerAttractionSystem.com and get on our VIP Priority Notification List to receive updates about the Do-It-Yourself Home Buyer Attraction System and receive behind-the-scenes information to help you get your house SOLD!