Selling Your Home During the Holidays: Navigating Staging and Decorations

T’is the season to…sell your house? The holidays can be a tricky time to market a house, especially when you want to celebrate them as usual. Thankfully, with a little foresight and tasteful holiday decor, you can be festive and evoke some seasonal spirit in prospective buyers.  Here are four home staging tips to achieve that.

1. Keep It Clean

The saying that “cleanliness is next to godliness” is never truer than when you are showing your home. Make sure you do a thorough cleaning before you start putting decorations up. Having little lights illuminate dust and grime would defeat the purpose.

If you are showing the home throughout the holiday season, make sure that the decorations themselves look clean and well cared for. Decorations can also attract dust, and if you have a tree, watch out for pine needles, broken ornaments, or fallen tinsel and imitation snow.

2. Keep It Simple

By simple, we mean tasteful. Don’t go overboard on the multi-colored, blinking lights. You want merry and elegant, not blinding and tacky. A few lines of string lights can accentuate architecture or draw attention to impressive trees in the front yard. Pick one or two theme colors for your holiday decor and coordinate the decorations.

Aim for neutral decorations – nothing too personal. Put presents under the tree after the viewing so visiting children aren’t tempted to touch them. Choose items that are more winter themed. You don’t know the faiths of prospective buyers, so make it festive for everyone.

3. Keep It Clear

Another reason why presents under the tree aren’t ideal: they can look cluttered. The same goes for stockings on the mantle and kitschy collections. Remember that when you are showing your home to prospective buyers, you want to show off how spacious it is.

As much as we love giant holiday trees, opt for a smaller one so that it doesn’t overwhelm the floor space in the living area. If your space is on the small side, look for a skinnier tree.

4. Keep It Sensory

Don’t forget that the holiday spirit doesn’t just come from what you see. The smell of freshly baked sugar cookies wafting through the house, or strategically placed bowls of nutmeg and clove-laden oranges – even a few cedar boughs – can pique buyers’ interest and create a sense of coziness and comfort.

Make sure that the aromas are not from artificial odor sources. They fool no one, and often come across as fake and chemically.