This home has been beautifully remodeled and Rocky Mountain Home Staging was lucky enough to have the opportunity to stage it.
See more details on this 5 bed/4 bath, 2,959 square foot home presented by Tony Martinez of Stellar Properties here.
This beautiful home in Nederland, Colorado sat on the market for over a year before the sellers called us to stage it. 
Two of the bathrooms and the kitchen had been updated and it had gorgeous views, floor to ceiling windows, a private master suite in the treetops and gleaming hardwood floors. The seller had been renting the home for some of the time it was on the market and it was showing less than it’s best.
A few updates in the master bedroom such as carpeting and paint as well as new paint in a second bedroom, enhance curb appeal and re-finishing the deck helped this home entrance buyers. After staging the home received two offers in a matter of weeks. See the photos of the transformation.
Walk-out Family Room Before
Walk Out Family Room After
Today, I decided to make my post a lot more like a “Dear Diary” entry.
Dear Diary,
I’m going to confide some of the deepest darkest truths that I hate telling home sellers. So here goes. In no particular order:
1. Your house stinks. This is a tough one. I always look around and try to spot the source of the smell. Sometimes it literally knocks you over from the front door and when you live there, you can’t smell it. It can be delicate, and it can be tricky but I can’t be a chicken and let my clients be one of those “Smelly cat” properties that sends good buyers running for the hills and gets the investors all excited because they know they will be buying for pennies on the dollar.
2. The paint colors you have lovingly and painstakingly selected are not great for selling. In fact, they are terrible. Continue reading
This is why having fabulous on-line photos is critical.
If you want to get more interested and qualified buyers through the door of your home, you need to intrigue buyers with your internet marketing. Now I know you are thinking “That’s what my agent is for.” And yes, your agent is the one who will put your photos on the MLS and arrange for the home to be photographed. But you are the one who determines how good those photos are:
Here are a few simple tips that will make your shots look better: Continue reading
Your cat or dog is part of the family. As an avid animal lover and lifetime pet companion myself, I have to guard against the slight feelings of mistrust I feel towards people who don’t love my animals. Many sellers have cats and dogs. Some even have more exotic pets. The cold, hard truth though is that many buyers don’t like them. Some people have allergies, some don’t like the smells, or the hair, some are worried about past carpet damage, some are afraid of specific breeds.
Further, all of the trappings of pet ownership detract from the selling features of our home. I’ve walked into many a living room and the very first thing I see is a huge dog bed, covered in half chewed raw hides (yuck) or worse, Continue reading
I was never a cheerleader. I was a pom-pom girl and while I didn’t cheer, I still remember this chant from my high school glory days.
For home owners who are serious about selling and need to do it fast – being aggressive is a necessity. How can you be aggressive you may ask? After all, I’m obviously not talking about yelling, doing high kicks or shaking your pom-poms. I am talking about shaking your money-maker though, and in this case, your money-maker is the preparation and packaging of your home..
There are 3 aggressive steps that are absolutely critical: Continue reading
Somehow word has gotten out that white is a good color to paint when selling your home. Unless you live in a light filled contemporary home, full of windows and on a beach or in an uber modern abode, this could not be further from the truth. Simply put, when it comes to selling, white walls are not your friend.
True, a neutral color is a must when it comes to staging – the key word is color. The house should feel light and bright, yet warm and comfortable. White is cold. White spaces feel stark and they don’t complement most furniture and accessories. White walls will not generate the desired response in your buyers, but many colors will. Choosing a color when selling is completely different from choosing a color when you decorate your home to live. You want to remove your personality from the home so that the new buyers can imagine themselves living there. But you don’t want the house to have NO personality, i.e. white walls, you want it to have a neutral personality – one that could work with all different styles, tastes and colors of furniture. Think Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware or Crate & Barrel when choosing a paint color. Notice how the strong colors are typically in the amazing accessories?
Soft tans and beiges work well as can Continue reading
Your taste is superb. Your home is decorated perfectly. You are proud of your design, the wall colors you have chosen and your cool accessories. There is no way that you need a home stager. After all, your place is kickin’.
Here’s the thing about selling though. Home staging has nothing to do with how good of a decorator you are. It doesn’t mean that your taste isn’t good or that you are bad at decorating. Home staging is about marketing your home to a specific target buyer. It’s about using principles of design and purchase psychology to get you a specific result; a financial result. It is about packaging your home to appeal to the people who will be laying down their hard-earned cash to buy it – odds are their taste is different from yours.
Selling your home is a business and you are now the VP of Marketing.
Sure your real estate agent will make sure Continue reading
We’ve talked before about what home staging is – properly preparing your house to meet your home selling goals. Home staging makes your home appealing to your target buyer and packages your product a step above your competition to bring in the offers.
But let’s talk for a moment about what home staging isn’t. For your consideration, my top ten:
A lot of sellers have no idea what home staging is or why they would need it. Home staging originated in the 1970’s but has become increasingly popular in the last 5 to 7 years. According to Wikipedia home staging is defined as,
“the act of preparing a private residence for sale in the real estate marketplace. The goal of staging is to make a home appealing to the highest number of potential buyers, thereby selling a property more swiftly and for more money. Staging techniques focus on improving a property’s appeal by transforming it into a welcoming, attractive product that anyone might want.”