One of the trickiest home decor challenges in your home is making your bed. When you are staging your home for sale, the master bedroom is a key component.Buyers are looking for the “wow” factor in this room. They want to be wooed and seduced!

Staging the master bedroom is essential to get buyers to make that emotional connection to your home. When they walk in, what do you think they want to see? Not your messy bed! Oh no, you have to not only make your bed every day while your home is for sale, but you need to make sure your bedding is fresh, updated and CLEAN. Think luxury hotel. That’s the vibe you want.

Thought I would share with you this other great article from houzz. It not only shows you how to make your bed but it will give you some good ideas for blanket and throw placement as well as the best pillow arrangements.

Your master bedroom will help sell your home. Study and learn. Not only will making a perfect bed give you the edge in selling your home, but you may just enjoy staying in your luxury hotel!

Updating your cabinet hardware is a very inexpensive way to give your kitchens and baths a whole new look. Just the right earrings or necklace can change the look of an outfit completely and the same is true for your cabinet hardware. It finishes the look and adds another texture – usually metal – to your kitchen.

Leaving old hardware on it dates your cabinets and your kitchen. For just $3-6. per pull or knob, you can really make a difference in how potential buyers view your home.

Anything you can do to say this home is “move in ready” will increase your price perception to buyers.

Here’s some ideas from houzz.com:

Don’t forget to browse the aisles of your local big box home improvement store such as Lowe’s and Home Depot. For a really tight budget look for “builder packs” that give you 6-8 pulls or knobs at a discount.

Other sources for unique and decorative cabinet hardware are:

 Pottery Barn

 Restoration Hardware

Anthropologie

Remember it’s little touches that can sometimes make a big difference when staging your home for sale!

Well it’s been a busy summer so far. What I am hearing is buyers are out there looking and making offers. Of course summer is a great time for most families as they try to move before the kids go back to school. It’s also a little easier moving when the weather is nice. Although…. it sure has been hot this year hasn’t it?

We want to share with you one of the secrets we learned while staging and selling a home this summer. Here are some HOT tips on pricing your home to sell.

 - Take a good hard look at what you need to net at the end of your home sale.  What do we mean by “Net”? That’s the bottom line. The check you take home (or have direct deposited) after all closing costs, repairs and your outstanding mortgage balance are deducted from your sale proceeds.

- Have your realtor do a comparative market analysis or use Zillow and Trulia to find recent sales in your immediate neighborhood. This gives you an idea of how to price your home so that it will sell quickly.

- Now there’s your sales price and your “net”.  Let’s say your sales price is $200K and you want to net $30K. Use this handy chart to estimate your closing costs by state. How close are you to walking away with that $30K? If you live in Texas your average closing fees on $200K are about $5000. Deduct 6% of $200K for average Realtor commission. And of course if you have a mortgage on your home you will have to pay that off so deduct that too. Your numbers may look like this:

  $200,000 Sales Price

-     12,000 6% commission

-       5,000  Closing costs

-  150,000  Your Mortgage Payoff

=   33,000   NET

- What is the bottom line? In this case, you would net $33,000 if you had no seller repairs or other expenses related to selling your home and if you got a full price offer. This shows you have $3,000. worth of wiggle room if you want to net or receive at least $30,000 from your sale.

Make sure your sales price is at or just below market if you want a quick sale. Is $200K your bottom line and at or just below market? Perfect.

- You now have a very good chance of selling your home quickly AND realizing your desired net amount.

- The old days of pricing high with the idea in mind you can lower the price later does not work in this new market place. You will waste valuable days on market and valuable time waiting for that “perfect” buyer.

- What if your mortgage payoff is a lot higher? Then you will have to adjust your net expectations and be very proactive about getting your home ready to sell by staging it to perfection. Staging your home for sale will give you the best opportunity to realize your selling goals for a quick and profitable sale.

In a lot of homes I visit I see that it only takes some very simple changes to make a big difference. When you are getting your home ready to sell and thinking about how to stage it to sell, one idea to keep in mind is fresh.

Fresh means new or different ways to look at your home and how it’s decorated. Fresh means finding an easy way to update the way your home looks and feels and by doing that, you help it to sell.

Remember how you feel when you walk into a model home? It’s like a story that plays out in front of you. They show you exactly how you could live in the home by using all the little emotional triggers to get you to bond with the house. Toys in the childrens’ room, flat screen TV’s on the wall, perfectly matched bedding and towels.

I’d compare it to a hotel room times ten. All of the excitement of being in a new planned environment that reminds you to relax and have fun. You just bring your toothbrush and move right in.

Keep that in mind when you are staging your home for sale. The majority of buyers want to feel that way too. When they walk in your home they want to feel that excitement, the sense of fresh new possibility. Most important, they want to feel how it will be when they are living in your home. Will they be able to have friends over for movie night? Can they see being intimate in the master bedroom?

Or have you left your dirty towels hanging in the bathroom? Have you made it difficult or impossible for them to imagine how wonderful their life will be living in your home?

Smart sellers understand how important it is for buyers to have their model home fantasies.

Your homework this weekend: Go visit a few model homes and see how they do it. Take home a few ideas and tips and you’ll be on your way to selling your home by making a buyer’s fantasy come true.

Want to update your home but don’t have a lot to spend? Are you wondering how to sell a home you own fast and want some tips?

I always recommend cleaning first and painting second. Both give you the option of putting some  “sweat equity” in your home and for a small investment you’ll make a big impact.

But how do you paint a room and how much paint does it take? Painting does take some practice but if you have the right tools, and some patience you can easily learn. It’s the quickest way to add value when you are selling your home.

First take a trip down to your local hardware store or big box retailer such as Home Depot or Lowe’s. Head to the paint department and start looking at color chips. Neutral is best but it doesn’t have to be boring! You can choose a warm neutral that has two complementary colors next to it. One should be lighter and one darker than your base neutral.

Grab a bunch of colors you like and take them home so you can see what they look like in your home and at different times of day. Light affects colors so don’t rely on the artifical light in the store to guide you. You need to see them on your walls. Tape them up and when you have one you like head back to the store and pick up a quart to try it out at home. Feeling confident? Buy a gallon or two.

Use these handy calculators to figure out exactly how much paint you need to buy.

Home Depot Paint Calculator

Benjamin Moore Paint Calculator – How much paint should I buy?

While you’re buying the paint, pick up some trim brushes and paint rollers and paint trays. I like the disposable cheap kind because if there is one thing I don’t like to do that’s clean paint rollers and brushes! The trim brushes are for the trim or baseboard and moldings and the rollers are for the walls.

We’ll talk about technique in a later post. But meanwhile, you’re out buying paint riight? See you soon.