Home staging

Home staging

Expert advice

Mother-and-daughter real-estate pros Donna and Shannon Freeman break down the best ways to stage a home to sell.

PLEASE DO

Set your listing price by using area comparables, not based on what you need to buy that ostrich farm.

Put personal collections away someplace safe, like a bank vault in Zurich.

Invest in a fresh coat of paint and get 150 percent green back on your investment.

Disclose everything, especially the stuff you are tempted not to.

Fix all running toilets, or risk flushing profits down the drain.

Remember that “outside” is the new “inside.” Show off all of your living spaces.

Visit model homes to see how neutrality and spaciousness are made to feel so inviting.

Grind a lemon in the garbage disposal – it smells great and it’s such great exercise.

Display the kind of plants that aren’t injection-molded and painted in a factory somewhere overseas.

Keep your day job. Hire an agent and assist him or her.

PLEASE DON’T

Rationalize that a higher asking price means you will have more wiggle room. You could wind up sitting idle on the market with a house full of wiggle room.

Respond to lowball offers with a counter – instead, respond with an invitation to re-submit.

Refer to a leaky foundation as a central humidifier.

Make your house smell like a cherry orchard or a department-store perfume counter.

Air your dirty laundry. This includes leaving bills and private papers out, or, of course, actual dirty laundry.

“Clean up” by stuffing all the closets.

Leave unfinished DIY jobs for the buyers’ honey-do list.

Defer yard work. Your house only gets one chance to make a first impression. Overgrown shrubs and broken gutters are the real-estate equivalent of dandruff.

Think licks from Rex the bulldog will help generate more offers.