How to Landscape a Home for Great Home Staging
They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but the saying doesn’t quite apply when staging your clients’ homes. How can a well put together and landscaped home boost return for your sellers?
The hardest part for sellers of a home is realizing that it’s no longer about their likes and dislikes; it’s all about what the potential buyer likes. Nicely staging a home both inside and out creates appeal for the widest range of potential buyers. A well-staged house and landscape helps homes sell more quickly and brings a higher price per square foot. An attractive and well-maintained landscape can add as much as ten percent to the value of your sellers’ homes.
In addition, staging the landscape can reduce upkeep for your sellers. Instead of spending hours manicuring the landscape, your sellers can spend their time and focus on keeping the inside of the home in a company-ready state and figuring out what to do with the many hours they can’t be in the house during open houses and showings.
Make the Landscaping Plan
As far as timing, your sellers should plan to start cleaning up the yard, patio, curbs and other outdoor areas about a month before they plan on showing the home. That timing should give them enough time to get everything looking right, hire any professional help they need, and not leave the impression that they waited until the last minute to get the landscape in order. Here are a few tips for your sellers to spruce up the yard in order to increase the value of the home:
Spruce up outdoor containers.
Containers for plants, especially large tropical plants, add considerable interest to patios and doorways as potential buyers enter and exit the home.
Touch up the mulch.
One easy way to touch up the landscape is by applying a fresh layer of mulch in the home’s garden beds. The color enhances the contrast of the surrounding plants and makes everything more vibrant.
Apply some color.
Seasonal color can do a lot to add vibrancy and contrast to a home’s landscape. Whether it’s a splashy display of color or simple highlights in a relatively monochromatic scene, color will add curb appeal to a home for sale.
Contour unsightly or overgrown shrubs and trees.
Regardless of the season that a home is for sale, it’s wise to tackle any pruning chores that have been overlooked. The idea is to show that not only the home’s interior has been maintained, but that the exterior has as well.
Clean up water-based features.
Water features can present problems if they haven’t been maintained properly. Get rid of any visible algae, remove compacted leaves and clean or replace the filters so that water is crystal clear.
Power-wash dirty surfaces.
Just like hiring a professional carpet cleaner, buying or renting a power washer to clean paved surfaces is an investment that will pay for itself. With very little time and effort, you can make dirty surfaces look brand new. Power washers also lend a benefit by the added application of cleaning fences, brick, and vinyl siding.
The goal here is to provide a hospitable, visibly carefree outdoor environment. The effort that your sellers spend in staging the landscape will give you as a real estate professional a distinct advantage over equivalent properties on the market and can ultimately increase the sale price of the home.
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