How Can I Affordably Prepare My House For Sale?

OBSERVE: Before you tackle this or any decorating project you first need to look around and really observe your surroundings and examine your house and property with "Fresh Eyes". Take a good look at each and every room including the front porch and try to imagine how a guest coming to your home for the first time will encounter each space. Will he or she trip over the entryways' cracked floor tiles, notice the smell from last night's dinner because there is not adequate ventilation in the house (since the windows have been paint sealed for years), or worse yet, get an unspoken warning alerting them to the fact that the house has little or no storage since all of your closets are now overflowing and packed to the ceiling!?

Looking at your home with objectivity is always difficult, so here's a simple and inexpensive trick to help you see your home from the perspective of the buyer. Take at least four photographs of each and every room, making sure that the photos overlap, offering a panoramic view of the entire space when they are displayed side by side. Now REALLY look at the photos as if they were a magazine layout and you were the very critical design editor. What areas cry out for decorating HELP, where are the locations that cause you embarrassment, and finally, make a list of all of the " I didn't realize it looked that bad!" sections of your home. Now you have a plan - a starting list of where your decorating attention and dollars can do the most good.

CREATE: The hardest part of any decorating project is the time it takes to be creative! And it is especially hard when you are trying to juggle the dollars between fixing the old house to sell and saving for the new. It is so much easier to just go to the store, buy whatever is on sale, paint the walls your basic off white and throw down a few yards of tan carpet. A good design and decorating scheme - whether you are creating for a quick sale or many years of contentment - takes restraint from "impulse decorating".

To overcome this common trait of sellers, I recommend that you go back and study your photos, take them with you when you go to the store, and then just stand there in the isle and THINK. That's right, just stand in the middle of the store and let your creativity flow. Think of how the new paint color will compliment the features of your home that you won't be changing during your pre-sale spruce up such as your cabinets, hard surface flooring and plumbing fixtures.

DECORATE: Who said that dramatic results come only from deep pockets? Once you have examined your project areas, defined, and outlined your approach and then allowed the necessary time for creativity to kick in, the decorating part is a piece of cake! With your new found creativity, you'll be amazed at how by simply rearranging your existing furniture, cleaning out your closets, and displaying your most prized accessories in a different room can make a huge difference in not only the look of your home but in the "feel". Afterall, that hard to define feeling of comfort is what decorating is all about and what buyers are looking for in a home.

When it comes time to decorate for the sake of a quick sale, keep your eye on the buyer's sense of COMFORT. Simple things like playing soft music as a background to your homes' design style is always a great way to get perspective buyers in the mood to stay and look around a little while longer. For a modern contemporary styled home, a little Frank Sinatra helps with the swing of things, just as for a more traditional styled home, classic light rock or new age instrumentalists like Yanni can do wonders for setting a tranquil sense of comfort to any home.