Staging Your Home Using Self Storage For a Successful Sale

Potential home buyers look at the quality and amenities in the area they are looking at buying. The quality of schools, job opportunities, location of retail and other services are all things that are taken into account. It is important that the condition and appearance of your home makes it easier for potential buyers to decide to buy your property and have confidence they are making the right decision. Unlike the other considerations mentioned above you can take complete control of this and ensure a successful sale. Not only that but your hard work will result in a better offer price,

The process of getting your property ready for sale is known as staging. It’s a bit like designing a set for a play.  Hence staging. It involves tidying up the surroundings of the house, perhaps doing some repairs or painting inside or out and presenting your home in a way that accentuates what it will be like to live there. Perhaps some flowers in the garden, colours toned down in your teenager’s bedroom, furniture and clothing thinned out to create space in the living areas and cupboards.   

Staging can be a fantastic way to showcase your home without letting it appear too "lived-in". This helps potential buyers visualize their furniture and possessions in your home.

One of the reasons that people choose to store with us is that they’re selling their house. This can be to make space in their home to enable staging, moving their possessions into storage between houses after the sale or temporary storage when downsizing or moving overseas.

Over the years we have learnt many useful tips and recommend other useful articles to help you successfully stage, sell and move.

It's not about personal taste - it's about creating a space that is neutral and adaptable enough for buyers to add their own personal touch. Before starting make a plan that covers the following points and decide the theme you want for each room of the house.

How To Do It

1) First impressions count – people will start evaluating your house before they even step inside so make sure the outside of your home looks welcoming too. Tidy up the garden if you have one, consider adding flowers or food plants to empty garden beds. Mow the lawn. If you don’t have time, perhaps consider a professional gardener or get your friends around for a working bee.

Make sure your doors are clean (i.e. doesn’t have any remnants of last year’s Christmas wreath!) and clean your windows. When the garden looks tidy you may see issues with the exterior of the house more easily. Perhaps a bit of paint or a cracked window with a broken catch need attention? Include anything else that’s broken or loose. Considering a complete repaint may help you get that better price. Brighter neutral colours are usually recommended.

Don’t forget to clean out your garage or garden shed. They often get used as a place to put the clutter from your house. The new buyer might be looking for a tidy workshop to do their hobbies. Hard for them to imagine this if the garage is stacked to the rafters.

Vehicles, trailers, boats, and outdoor toys, furniture or equipment will detract from the appeal of your home’s exterior, so these should be hidden away or moved off-site.

If you rent a self-storage unit, you’ll have a secure and sheltered place for all the loose items and furniture that you temporarily remove to emphasise your free space. We also provide storage for vehicles and boats as well.

 

2) Clear your home of clutter – you don’t have to throw away all of your belongings but by de-cluttering your rooms, you’ll not only make the house look tidier and form a good impression, but you’ll make the spaces look larger.

This is because there are two major problems with clutter:

• Buyers may be distracted and not see the features of the home you are trying to emphasise.
• Because the rooms have more content It makes it seem like the home has less space. It is a bit like whitespace in text making it easier to read.

Start with the easy things. Box up and put into storage anything you are not using on a day-to-day basis such as:

• Odd items, boxes of assorted stuff or knickknacks that are just lying around
• Games
• Documents, bills, newspapers, magazines
• seasonal clothes and sporting equipment
• hobbies

You will also come across things you no longer need:

• Expired or opened and not used food in the back of the pantry – discard this
• Containers, cooking appliances and implements
• Clothes and toys that the kids have long since grown out of or no longer use
• Consider donating or giving away items to cut down on the self storage space required. The more empty space you have in your home, the better.

Then to free up more space to entice potential buyers, start by removing items that detract from the spaciousness of your living room, family room and bedrooms – and the amount of storage space available within the house, in closets, the attic, your basement, and the garage. Items to consider would include:

• Excess furniture – cut back to a minimum, so remove odd chairs and tables and extra furniture in bedrooms. If your furniture is scruffy, you can hire staging furniture from businesses specializing in this.
• Too many book cases? Store them and cut back on the number of books on display in the ones you keep. Shelves no more than 60%-70% full are ideal.

• Consider reducing the number of beds in a room to just a single one. If a bedroom looks small with a double bed consider borrowing or renting a small double if you have a king for example.

Leave enough furniture to stage the home in line with the plan for each room you made before starting.

3) Consider rearranging your furniture a bit – there’s a common misconception that by pushing all of your furniture against the walls, the room will feel larger but apparently floating them away from the walls can help the space feel more friendly and open. For example, move beds away from side walls to make them the focus of the room

4) Similarly, people are interested to see how much storage you’ve got and it doesn’t look great if your cupboards and closets are filled to the brim. Aim to have about 20-30% space left in each area.

5) If you’ve got a spare room that you’re just using to store things in, consider moving those items into storage and setting the room up as an office or a reading room or something that people can envisage themselves using.

6) Painting your room in neutral colours can help potential buyers picture what they could do with the room, it is also much easier for people to paint over neutral colours than to get rid of a bold colour – i.e. less effort for the buyers.

7) Make sure everything works – if you have any lightbulbs that are out or clocks missing batteries, these are small things but they can look like you don’t care enough about the property to fix them. Also make sure you replace any missing or damaged doorknobs and handles

8) Find the balance between clean and lived-in – make sure the house is clean and smells pleasant, if you have a pet, make sure to let some fresh air in – you might be used to the smell but potential buyers won’t be. Maybe invite a friend or neighbour over and see what they think.

9) Depersonalise – remove or hide anything too personal – people are looking for a way to fulfill their dreams and like to imagine themselves in the space. This is hard to do if there are lots of family photos, keepsakes and refrigerator art.

Other than discreetly in your tidied wardrobes, keep clothes hidden away as much as you can. This  especially applies to dirty clothes in the laundry, make sure the laundry hamper is empty. Keep the bathrooms clean and cleared of everything but hand soap. Unless you are staging a child’s room put away any toys and any other personal items that bring to mind the home’s current occupants.

Remove any potentially controversial items or anything that people might be offended by. This can be hard to predict, but usually related to topics you like to avoid in conversation.

10) - If you don’t have new appliances in the kitchen, make sure the existing ones are spotless. Likewise, make sure your bathrooms sparkle, from the corners of the tub, to the sink drain, to that spot behind the toilet that you don’t think anyone can see. Your goal should be to make everything look new

11) -  Fresh flowers are always a nice touch – if they’re from your garden, even better!

 

Self Storage Options When Staging a Home

While some things you will be glad to get rid of, there are items you will want to hang onto until you move into the new home. Storing your items is the perfect solution. Here are some of the storage options available

 

Moving Company

The moving company you contract to move your home may be able to provide storage space to store your items while your home is being staged. Then they can simply collect the remaining items and move everything to your new home or store it until you find one. Moving companies can provide a few options such as simple storage space or storage pods among others. The downside is you may not have access to your property in storage or have as much control over its security.

These options are convenient, but they do involve cost. What you choose may depend on your budget.

 

Friend or family member’s house

A budget-friendly option is to ask one of your friends or family members if you can store some of your stuff at their home while yours is on the market. Chances are, someone you know has some extra space that can hold a few boxes for a short period of time. However, if you have a lot of furniture to store, this may not be the most efficient option. Insurance for your property may be difficult to arrange, if it is available.

 

Self Storage Unit

This is where Kiwi Self Storage comes in. While you have a few options, we know we are the best choice to meet your self storage needs.

The best option for storing your stuff when staging and selling a home is a storage unit. It gets everything completely off your property and you can pop by whenever you need something. When it’s time to move, it’s easy to drop by with the moving truck and pick everything up again to take it to the new place. We provide a large range of storage unit sizes at five sites in Auckland and Wellington. Your possessions are safe and secure with us.

Features of our facilities are:

Secure

• CCTV, electric-perimeter fencing, individually-alarmed units and coded gates.

Conveniently located Auckland Storage Units and Wellington Storage Units

•   Wellington: Newlands and Kilbirnie
•   Auckland: North Shore, Ellerslie and Mt Roskill

Lots of different sized units

• We'll help you work out which is the best size for you and give you advice on how to make the most of the space.

Resident managers or custodians who live on site

• They can be quick to respond should an emergency occur and provide round-the-clock security for your facility.

Free use of trailers and trolleys to help you move.

We sell a wide range of packaging materials

• Boxes
• Packing supplies
• Tape
• Bubble wrap
• Specialised furniture covers
• and more!

We offer competitively-priced insurance for as little as a cup of coffee per month!

Our staff are storage specialists and they're happy to help. Feel free to arrange a time to drop by and see what we offer. In fact we recommend it!

The main thing is that you get a good feel for the facility and feel comfortable. Whether you’re storing for a short time or for longer, it’s important to look at all factors.

We know we’re biased but we’ve been in this business for over twenty years now and we strive to make the process easier for you. At Kiwi Self Storage, we put you, the customer at the heart of everything we do. Let us take the stress out of moving and make storage easy for you.

Give us a call today on 0800 58 57 56 or enquire online.

 

Other Reading

Where to store your stuff when staging your home

Staging Your Bedrooms

Gorgeous Home staging

 

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