For most of us, our home is the biggest investment we will ever make. When it comes time to sell, treating your home as such will help you get a bigger return on your investment. You want it to look it’s very best when potential buyers come through or view your photos online. First impressions matter, which is where home staging comes in. Home staging emphasizes its strengths and minimizes its weaknesses. This is important for your marketing photos and when potential buyers are trying to visualize a life there.

Here are a few tips to help you get your home ready to sell.

Declutter

One of the first things you want to do is declutter. Clutter takes up space and space is what sells. Make your home look bigger and more desirable by editing down to just the basics.

De-personalize

De-personalizing goes hand-in-hand with decluttering. You want potential buyers to be able to picture their things in the house. Go room-to-room and clear off the countertops, desk tops and shelves of all personal items. This includes your family photos. In this case, less is always more.

Clean

Cleaning goes a long way to improve the look and feel of your investment. A deep clean before you list the home is a good idea, but then set aside time each week to give the floors and bathrooms a once over.

Spackle and Paint

Now that your home is decluttered, de-personalized and clean, it’s a good time to spackle and paint. Filling in the holes and applying a fresh coat of paint will freshen the look of the house. Using lighter colors like white or beige will make the room feel bigger.

The National Association of REALTORS took a look at the value staging a home brings to the selling process, the return on investment or ROI. Here is what it determined.

• 83% of buyers’ agents say that staging makes it easier for buyers to visualize the property as their future home.
• 44% of buyers’ agents say that staging a home increases the dollar value offered
• 53% of sellers’ agents say that staging a home decreases the amount of time a home spends on the market
• 95% of agents recommend that sellers declutter their home before putting it on the market.

When it comes to the return on investment, a staged home will sell faster and for more money than a non-staged home. The results of a recent Coldwell Banker survey show staged homes sell for more than 6% above the asking price. For a $200,000 listing, that’s $12,000 extra in the seller’s pockets.