How to Prepare Your Baton Rouge Home for Showings

By Darren James

Darren James is a highly accomplished real estate professional and the founder of one of Baton Rouge’s premier real estate firms. With over 20 years of experience in selling and marketing real estate.

A lot of sellers ask the same thing: How in the world do I prepare my home for sale? How do I get it ready for staging?

There are several things you’ve got to look at, and the first one has nothing to do with how your house looks.

Before you stage anything, run an updated pre-approval on yourself. I see it all the time. Someone’s ready to put their house on the market, and their financial situation has changed since they bought the home they’re standing in. Maybe you got married. Maybe you changed jobs or were demoted. There are plenty of reasons your numbers today might differ from those back then, and you want to know you can afford that next home before you sell your current one. That’s very, very important, and it’s the step people skip.

Once that’s handled, let’s talk about getting the house ready.

Curb appeal is everything because it’s the first thing a buyer sees. Get the yard mowed. Deal with the hose reels, the hose pipes, and all that stuff sitting around where people can see it. Get your flower beds properly mulched. None of this is expensive or complicated, and all of it changes what a buyer thinks before they ever reach your front door.

Get your lighting right, inside and out. Check every bulb around the perimeter of the home and every bulb on the interior. I’d recommend natural white light. It makes the property feel brighter, feel cleaner, feel more open. It’s one of the cheapest changes you can make and one of the ones buyers notice most, even if they couldn’t tell you why. And how a home feels the moment a buyer steps inside makes a real difference.

Get the interior picked up. Now, if you have children, this is the hard part. They pull it out, you pick it up, they pull it out again. You want the home showing properly when buyers walk in, looking its best in every aspect. But here’s what I tell people: don’t drive yourself batty trying to make sure every little nook and cranny is perfect every single time. This is supposed to be a good experience for you. There are ways around it, and a good agent will show you what they are.

That’s really it. Make sure the pre-approval and those three factors are in check, and everything’s in its proper order. Your home is now ready for buyers to walk through it.

If you want a more detailed list on staging, text the word “staging” to 225-335-7666, and I’ll send it over. You can also email me at darren@agent225.com or visit agent225.com anytime. Hope this makes your summer selling a little easier, and enjoy that vacation with your family.