So You Want to Redesign Your Home!

Many people today are planning to redesign their home for a new look or stage their home for sale. Let’s examine each of these activities in more detail.

First, why are many people doing a home redesign? The economy today has a lot to do with it. The housing market has lost approximately 50% of its value so selling a home and purchasing a new one is difficult or impossible if you have a mortgage. The option to a new home is to redesign the old one, and perhaps adding an addition.

Doing a home redesign is very intimidating for many people. It involves a number of areas of expertise such as design theme, furniture selection, layout, color theory, accessories, fabrics, arrangements, cost control and budgeting, etc. If you have the money you can always hire a professional designer or decorator. However, in today’s economy many people are looking for ways to do it themselves. Fortunately, there are a great number of self help options available on the internet.

Even more difficult for many is having to sell their home. Again the economy is the culprit. Not all realtors are good at staging homes, so what are your options? What is staging a home in the first place and why do you need to do it. Why can’t you just sell your home as is and the prospects can take it as is. Well, here are the reasons given by most realtors and professional stagers.

First, over time most families accumulate an enormous amount of furniture and goods.
Unless you are a minimalist, your place will probably look cluttered to the prospect who is trying to visualize their furniture in your home. The prospect buys on emotion and you must appeal to them. Therefore, less is more appealing. Staging professionals know what to keep and what to discard. They know how to layout to create a pleasing visual arrangement to the prospective buyer.

Second, color and arrangements are vital to get a quick sale and an acceptable price.
Professional stagers have a list of key buying factors that are paramount to success. The success of stagers are evident if you watch HGTV as many times they go into a home that is not selling and by using staging techniques, help the owners to a successful sale.

Again, should you decide to sell the home without a realtor or your realtor is not a professional stager, there are options available on the internet to help you accomplish this task. Go to any search engine,i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo Search, etc. and key in some keywords relating to your task such as “stage a home” or “professional home stagers” and see what comes up. Many of them will offer tips on staging relating to their expertise hoping to get you interested in their services.

Finally, stagers will be able to recommend any changes or upgrades that will be necessary to sell the home at the maximum price, i.e. flooring, counters, etc. Again, there is a plethora of help available to you on the internet to help in this area.

In conclusion, you can find the help you need to redesign or stage you home on the internet without hiring a professional decorator.