Effective Staging Steps to Sell A Home Fast

We’d be a dream team, my spiritual twin, Sandra, and I, staging homes for sale. Odd that for the 30 years we’ve been pals, Sandra’s family has yet to move from her home by a creek, while my family has moved five times. I confess we met at our rented house, but with Sandra’s aid our family successfully sold three houses we mortgaged. She was my go-to consult for decorating various domiciles.

Decades ago she feathered and color washed our chair railed dining room. As I was about to exit for a meeting, Sandra arrived with supplies and a large board. I asked about the board. She replied, “I need to practice feathering before I start.”

I almost cancelled her first paid decor job. I thought of Dining Room Owner Two, my beloved hubby, who learned from his dad how to paint walls with nary a streak or drip. MBH ever ferrets faults in painted walls. But Sandra’s technique efforts wowed both he and I. So I snapped wall photos for her portfolio, as I deemed myself her unofficial, unpaid manager.

Sandra’s hands needed to beautify whatever she surveyed in a room. Of course she politely asked before she shoved someone’s couch or end table across the room. Watching her, I learned that well placed items could bless others. For me it would bless buyers to rapidly place offers on my former homes, ... houses, by the way, not in bidding-wars California.

This past week I helped Sandra’s daughter, M, stage her Deep South house for sale...


Clever sellers clean their homes into open canvases on which eager buyers can imagine their belongings. Clever M’s house had a great room busy to the ceiling with three artsy young kids, two hairy dogs, and one hubby with his military glue and paint models. What she did before she left the house to the Coldwell Banker realtor, any seller should consider as effective staging steps:

* Clear walls and ceilings of family items. Sticky toys will cling to vaulted ceilings.

* Caulk and clean and paint the cleared walls, as well as damaged baseboards and doors. She used a contractor recommended painter to paint the walls the new neutral, light gray.

* Hide in the boxes.  Box books, eclectic home decor, kitchenware, and excess toys. M orderly stacked boxes in the garage, so buyers could survey the car space. Rental storage units are useful.

* Erase your furniture. M and her husband already trucked their furnishings to storage near her husband’s relocation. Then M, the kids, and dogs returned to campout in the house.

* Beg, borrow, stage. Among my donations, M borrowed a queen air mattress, bedding, a wood/leather card table with chairs. M scrounged through my décor for floral arrangements, a modern vase, and a resin Celtic cross. On the fireplace mantle she placed my Hobby Lobby wired art that spelled B-L-E-S-S-I-N-G-S. Just a few, well placed items can pop a house for sale into a buyer's home.

Effective stagings could spell blessings to home sellers and buyers. Yet even more blessings are freely enjoyed by sellers or buyers or anyone who lives by faith with God in Jesus. In His house you'll find connected family and a home that's out of this world.