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Stage Your Omaha Home for a More Profitable Sale!

by Nancy Heim-berg

Are you getting your home ready to sell in Omaha? If so, it’s a busy time for sure, with plenty of preparations to make. One of the things you need to really focus on though is making your home stand out in the Omaha real estate market. This is called staging. Many people may feel the need to hire a professional to make their home shine. There’s nothing at all wrong with that idea, but it can get expensive. You can save money by doing a few basic main tasks. And the best part is that you can save money and raise the potential of selling your home for more. Here’s what you can do.

De-Clutter & Clean

Who wants to buy a dirty home? Not many, so make sure you go through your house with a fine-tooth comb. Your home needs the deepest clean it’s ever had. Go room by room and clean from top to bottom. Then sort through all of your possessions and decide what really needs to stay for showings and what you can discard or put in storage. Doing this kills two birds with one stone. You not only raise the appeal of your home, but it will be easier to move when you sell. Keep in mind that this is no longer going to be your home. Buyers need to see it as their own, so make sure the slate is as clean as possible so that they can envision their own possessions in it.

Be Versatile

Sure, the pink kid’s room may have been cute once. But it may not appeal to everyone. The best thing with rooms is to make them more generic instead of making it seem like they need to be used for the purpose you used them for. You can paint the bedrooms a more gender-neutral color and take down posters and other personal items. If you have a room that you used for something specific, like a sewing room, you may want to turn it into a more general guest room with a desk or table for projects. Like we mentioned above, buyers need to see this home as their own and be able to see themselves living in it.

Curb Appeal

We all know the saying about first impressions. When it comes to selling a home, that saying rings true. What do people think when they drive by your home? Why not ask your neighbors or friends? The more ideas and input you can get, the better. The fact is that many times buyers will drive by a home before they even schedule a showing. You don’t want that, obviously, so make sure you make the outside of your home appeal to as many buyers as possible. You should make sure the yard is well cared for. Add a fresh coat of paint to the siding and trim. Polish or replace dull hardware. Clean the walkways and driveway. Also think about investing in new roofing if it’s showing its age.

Other things you can look at in your home are making sure your foyer is clean and clutter free, do a walk through to find areas to focus on, find ways to let in more light, cleaning the fridge and organize the cupboards.

Have your home needs changed in the past year? Perhaps you’ve outgrown your present home, or need to downsize to a more suitable home. If you’re ready to make a move, let’s connect and talk about all the amazing opportunities that are available to you!

Five Ways To Fall Back In Love With Your Home

by Nancy Heim-berg

Five Ways To Fall Back In Love With Your HomeWhether you have been in your house for two years or two decades, there comes a point where things start to feel stale and you may even catch yourself daydreaming about a different, newer home. Unless you have the budget (and patience) for a home renovation, you may be wondering how you can breathe new life into your current home. 

In today’s blog we are going to be covering five ways for you to fall back in love with your home all over again through a couple of simple changes. Let’s dive in:

-Getting organized is a great way to revitalize your space and make your home feel larger and more alive. Spend some time getting rid of junk, clutter and items that you don’t need/use in areas such as drawers, shelves, closets, countertops, etc. With the items that are remaining utilize organizers such as boxes, bins and holders to make your rooms feel new and manageable. 

-A fresh coat of paint is a great and cost effective way to completely transform the look and feel of your home. You can express your style and personality with a fun accent wall color or go crazy with funky color in the spare bedroom. You will be amazed how much paint can transform your space and make your home feel fresher, newer and brighter.

-Lighting is another feature of a home that can drastically impact the feel of any room.  Updating light fixtures, incorporating lamps and even cleaning windows can bring more light in and brighten up your entire space. 

-Adding an area rug is a relatively small change that can make a big impact on a room. Utilizing a larger rug can make a room can appear larger and add warmth, color and texture to any space. 

-Lastly, rearranging furniture has transformative powers to when it comes to changing the way you feel about your home. You can make a space feel brand new by moving existing furnishings around and even adding in new pieces here and there. You will feel like you are vacationing in your own home!

 

Selling your Omaha, NE home? Allow our team of professional, knowledgable and trustworthy real estate agents to go to work for you! Additionally, don't miss our "Seller Tips" page here

Help Your Omaha, NE Home Sell Faster - Avoid These Six Common Staging Mistakes!Staging is a crucial part of the selling process, especially if you want your home to appeal to a wide range of potential buyers. It goes without saying that not everyone has the same taste in decor, paint colors and overall home aesthetics. Staging allows buyers to visualize themselves and their family living in the space, regardless of style differences. 

Below we have listed six common staging mistakes to avoid. Keeping these in mind during the selling process will allow your home to appeal to a wider range of buyers and stand out in a competitive market. Let’s dive in: 

Unnecessary furniture 
One extremely common staging mistake that sellers make is having too much furniture positioned in each room of the home. You want to keep in mind that potential buyers want to imagine themselves in the home with their belongings and that vision is clouded if they can’t see the space clear enough. Less is more when it comes to furniture and staging. 

Incohesive/dark paint choices
Splashing a fresh coat of paint on the walls is a great and relatively inexpensive way to refresh the rooms of your home. Dark paint colors tend to make a room feel uninviting and smaller than it is and having drastically different colors throughout your home is likely to disrupt the overall flow within the house. Light, neutral colors are always a safe bet. 

Having too many personal items on display
While showing that the space is livable is good, sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad. It’s always helpful to put away the extra knick knacks prior to potential buyers touring your home. This will allow them to focus on the space itself and not commenting on family vacation photos or refrigerator art projects. 

Leaving rooms in the house empty
Some sellers believe if they can’t stage a room with expensive furniture that it’s better to just leave it vacant. This is a large mistake. Not only do furniture and decor have the ability to conceal imperfections within the room, they also show the potential of the space. 

Ignoring the exterior of the home
It’s true when they say you never get a second chance at a first impression. Driving up, the exterior of your home is the first thing potential buyers will see so be sure to not neglect it. Planting flowers, pulling weeds, adding a wreath to the door and painting your front door are simple things that can make a huge difference.  

Having realistic expectations of staging 
While the staging process can be extremely beneficial and helpful when selling a home, it’s not magic. It will not cover up obvious structural issues or evident flaws throughout the home, so be sure have realistic expectations when approaching the process.

 

Selling your Omaha, NE home? Allow our team of professional, knowledgable and trustworthy real estate agents to go to work for you! Additionally, don't miss our "Seller Tips" page here

As we discussed in a previous blog post, your listing photos are a crucial part of the home selling process and can be a huge factor in the amount of initial interest your listing receives. And while you may not be the one who is actually snapping the images, it is always good to understand the process so you can set up your home to photograph its best. In today’s blog post, we will be discussing a few tips and tricks to help ensure your images not only turn out well but stand out from the rest. Let’s jump in: 

-While it is important that buyers can get a good sense of a house, you want to be sure that it doesn’t appear too “lived in.” Buyers understand that a busy family lives in the house, but your images don’t have to appear that way. Spend some time decluttering the space so that the images appear clear and families can focus on the structure and layout.  

-On that same note, you may want to consider renting a storage unit for items in your home that make the rooms closed off/small and/or cluttered. If you are not sure if a piece of furniture is too big for a space, it may be better to just remove the item and keep it in a storage unit for a little while until the home sells. 

-While decluttering is important, you also want to depersonalize the home. Take the family pictures off the dining room table, remove the kid’s birthday party invitations from the refrigerator doors and take away the piles of magazines from the end tables. You want the images to showcase the home itself and not have potential buyers be distracted by the other items. 

-If your home offers a lot of natural light or breathtaking views, you want to make sure that is highlighted in your images as that can be a huge selling point. Make sure all your curtains are open and windows are cleaned. For a better photograph, you want to make sure all lights and lamps are turned on, inside and out, but to make sure that all ceiling fans are turned off.

-Staging a home is known to increase not only the amount of offers that come in, but also the price of those offers. You can either stage the home yourself or bring in a professional staging company to help ensure the home looks its best and is staged to sell. 

 

Be sure to check back every week for more real estate information and events happening around Omaha, NE. Also, be sure to check our “About” page to learn more about our talented team! 

Looking to Stage Your Home? You Don’t Want to Miss These Tips!

by Nancy Heim-berg

Putting your home on the market is such a fun and exciting time as you are saying goodbye to one chapter and looking forward to the next. Staging your home is one way to help sell your home faster and seem more appealing to potential buyers. And while that may sound like a daunting task, it doesn’t have to be. There are some simple tips and tricks that we will be discussing today to help you through the process – we hope you take them and use them during your home selling process.

One of the first things you will want to do when staging your home is to de-clutter the spaces. Having too many items and/or furniture can make the home look small and closed off, which can be a turn off for potential buyers. It is also a good idea to steam clean the carpets, repaint the rooms that look dull, and give away or sell things that you do not need anymore. This will all help you to achieve a clean canvas for you to stage. Also, if you are going to be painting the inside of the home, you may want to stick to white or lighter colors as they can help to make the spaces appear larger.

Nothing is better than a home that has light and no one likes walking into a dark and dreary home. And the good news is if your home is darker than you would like, it is a pretty simple fix! First, make sure that all windows are clean to help push natural light through the home. Next, you will want to replace any dark window treatments with lighter ones to brighten up the frame of the room.

One thing that can help potential buyers see how the spaces can be best utilized is to stage furniture how the room should best be used. Leaving a room unfurnished or solely as a kids play room (when potential buyers may not have kids) can deter them from seeing the home’s potential. You will also want to crank up the curb appeal as this is the first impression potential buyers will have of the home. Make sure your front door is freshly painted, plant some new colorful flowers and make sure the grass is trimmed. You never have a second chance at a first impression, and these are simple ways to make sure it is a good one!

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Heim-Berg Team
Berkshire Hathaway
331 Village Pointe Plaza
Omaha NE 68118
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(402) 679-7108 | (402) 830-6123
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