Staging Your Home

In the last week, For Sale signs have been popping up all over Milton, Oakville, Burlington, Guelph and Cambridge. It looks like the “Spring” market is about to get into swing. The last year has brought a lot of changes into the residential real estate market and with those changes, people are more timid about committing to buying a single family, detached home. What does this mean for sellers? You need to stand out – and the best way to stand out is to make sure purchasers see your house, not everything you’ve crammed into your house.

Tips for Staging Your Home

There are real estate agents who will offer complimentary staging of your home now, but if you’ve decided to stage your own home, here are some tips on where to start, and how self-storage at Storage Solutions can help you get more for your home:

• Kick Out Clutter: It’s obvious, but painful, to properly stage your home, you need to get rid of most of your everyday “stuff”. One category that actually adds a lot of bulk to your house – furniture. Most people have WAY too much furniture (how many plush chairs do you really need?) and removing even one item of furniture from each room in your house will make it seem bigger.
• Float Your Furniture: Most of us push furniture up against the wall but the best way to make your room feel bigger (once you’ve gotten rid of some of your larger pieces), is to put your furniture into groups away from the wall. For example, two small sofas opposite each other with a coffee table in between will feel much bigger than a huge, L-shaped couch and a large table.
• A Purpose to Each Room: We all actually have junk rooms, or areas in the house were things accumulate (ahem…the basement), but this doesn’t show a potential buyer any value. Move those items into self-storage (with Storage Solutions in Milton!) and “repurpose” the space. For example, your basement, clear it, put down some rubber tiles (very inexpensive and will make the potential purchaser think your home is much warmer) and get a used bike from Play it Again Sports. Voila, you have a gym in your home (which you might benefit from as well).
• Don’t Use Colour: Paint rooms bright, neutral tones, and if you want a room to feel bigger, paint it the same colour as the next room.
• Odd Man Out: When you’re putting accessories in a room, always use an odd number and vary the height and width. If you want something dramatic, bring the outdoors indoors – clip flowers, holly branches, ferns – whatever is “in season” outside, and use that as an accent inside.
• Finish All Your Mr. Fix-It Projects: Unfinished DIY jobs look cheap and make people think something is wrong with the house. Finish them all before you list because buyers will do a mental deduction in their head, and likely they are taking more off of their offer than it costs you to fix the item.

The best thing you can do if you’re selling your home is get organized and remove what you can. Your home will feel bigger, brighter and easier to navigate. If you’re planning to move into a bigger home, then self-storage make sense for you because you don’t want to get rid of furniture – you just want to have a safe place to keep the furniture while you sell. If you’re moving into a small home, then you need to either decide to sell the furniture, donate it, or store it in case you are in a transition period.

Need Space to Stage Your Home? Consider Self-Storage!

No matter what, Storage Solutions in Milton is a great place to store. If you’re staging your home, that means you’re transitioning and you probably don’t know what your storage needs are. The good news is that we offer month-to-month contracts so you are not tied down.

Storage Solutions also offers exclusively drive-up units (imagine carrying your couch all the way to an elevator and down a hall…no thank you!), 24/7 access, on-site staff and security. And, our location is central, easy to get to, and quiet. You don’t need to jockey for space and room while you pack your storage unit.

Still have questions? We’re happy to find answers for you and we want you as a customer. Call us at 905-854-1008, email us at info@storagesolutionsontario.com or come on in to 9200 Twiss Rd, Milton Ontario.

Your friend in self-storage,

Storage Solutions