It doesn't take long for a prospective buyer to form an opinion about your house. Here's how you can tilt the odds in your favor by making your home appeal to the widest clientele possible

You don't have much time.

Prospective home buyers form an opinion about the home you're selling in 15 seconds, by one estimate. And the clock starts ticking at the curb -- even before the home buyers get in the house. So how do you tilt the playing field in your favor? Increasingly, it's by staging your home.

Generally speaking, staging means making your home as appealing as possible, as quickly as possible, to the broadest clientele you can.

In this market now, staging is desperately needed even more so, because it's so competitive. In fact, about one in four homes nationwide are now staged. So if you're not doing it, you may be at a disadvantage.

There are techniques to pulling this off -- some of them obvious, and some not so apparent. We polled the experts to get some of their top tips.

Staging as un-decorating

Staging takes some effort and some money -- but it works. According to a study done in 1999 that was done by a real-estate broker, staged homes remained on the market less than half the time that unstaged homes did -- about 14 days versus 31 days. The average difference in sale price over list price for staged homes was 6.3%, versus 1.6% for unstaged homes. You stand to gain $9,000 on a $200,000 house.

Here’s what you need to understand about staging:

How you decorate to live in your house and how you decorate to sell your house are very different.  Decorating implies adding. But staging is all about paring away personal decoration. Why? Because the driving idea behind staging is to let people imagine themselves living in your home, leading the good life. It's NOT about you and your stuff and your taste.

Nearly everything in staging sprouts from this basic idea.

The tips

1. Declutter. This is staging's golden rule. Clutter isn't just your average mess. Clutter is the so-called "visual dandruff" -- newspapers, mail, laundry, knickknacks -- that accumulates in a house that's well-lived-in.  Clutter eats up equity. If there's a bookshelf, pack up two-thirds of those books and put them away and basically just arrange the rest in nice little displays.

This mantra also applies to furniture. A good rule of thumb is that a staged living room should have half of its furniture removed, to give a better sense of spaciousness and movement. What to do with it? You're moving, so pull a storage pod into the driveway and pack it up.

And when you do rearrange, make sure you highlight the focal point of the room, such as arranging chairs around a fireplace in an inviting, approachable scene, experts say.

Streamline the kitchen counters too. Keep the coffeepot, but put away the toaster and the toaster oven. You don't need it. You want sleek, clean lines. And you want them to say, 'Wow, look at the counter space.' "

2. Be a neat freak. This may go without saying, but the only thing as important as decluttering is having an immaculate house. That means steam-cleaning the carpets. Walls should be painted if needed. Pressure-washing outdoor decks and aluminum siding can do wonders for a home's first impression and boost a home's value. One place homeowners can never clean enough is the bathroom, stagers say. Toss out that bath mat; it's probably a wreck. Declutter it ruthlessly, add a few candles, and hide all but one or two of the shampoo bottles.

3. Hide the sword collection. Another name sometimes used for staging is "blanding," and there's a reason for it: Now's the time to sell your space, not your personal tastes, because you never know what may turn off would-be buyers. It's got to appeal to everyone.

Remove family photos and religious items. Avoid themed bedrooms -- a room with clowns, sports, or superheroes.  In order to appeal to a broad audience, you’ve got to take that away, or it will not sell.

4. Search and destroy odors. A popular saying, "If you can smell it, we can't sell it." A house that smells odd to a prospective homeowner -- whether because of a cat's litter box, or dogs, or exotic food -- can easily be a deal breaker. Ask someone you trust to give you an honest answer whether your home has a distinct odor. Then tackle the problem, by steam-cleaning the carpets and furniture, moving litter boxes elsewhere, scrubbing the kitchen, etc. Finally, don't try to mask anything with potpourri, or by baking cookies. Just open windows a few minutes before a showing to let in fresh air.

5. Spend the money where it matters: out front. Use your time and money wisely. Studies show that the front porch is where prospective home buyers spend the most time, as they wait for the door to be unlocked. Paint the front door. Replace the brass light fixtures on the front porch if they're too badly tarnished, or at least paint them. Place planters on each side of the door, as well, with flowers in vibrant colors that excite the eye.

Once inside, the foyer or entryway -- if you have one -- is where people will linger the longest in the house. "Wow them now!" Make sure the paint is a creamy neutral and fresh, and the flooring looks great. All you need for décor is a thin table, a lamp, a vase of fresh flowers. If you have a limited budget and can only afford to replace the entryway flooring or the guest bedroom carpeting, choose the foyer. It is the first impression.

6. Use fresh flowers. Throughout the house. Always fresh. Only fresh.

7. Make it current. As much as possible, you want your home to give off a feeling of being up-to-date, trendy even -- regardless of how long it's been since you've bought furniture. But how do you do that? Sometimes professional stagers bring in rented furniture and lamps to impart a better vibe; the staging of multimillion-dollar homes can even involve bringing in "rental" artwork from museums. You can get some of the same effect, though, just by paring down your belongings and looking at what's current these days.

Pick up magazines such as In-Style and Better Homes and Gardens to get ideas. Then pick and choose your furniture, and camouflage accordingly, if necessary. For example, what's in today is a more streamlined, clean look; the so-called "lumpy/bumpy" look is out. What to do with that puffy loveseat? Toss a slipcover over it to give it a sleeker appearance. Got a particularly ugly couch? A few big, well-placed cushions from Target can distract the eye and hide it in a pinch.

8. Think spacious. People often move because they want more room, so make your house feel as spacious as possible. Closets should be half full, and you should be able to see the bottom of the closet. Show people a jam-packed closet, and they'll think it's too small for them, too.

Similarly, bedrooms should contain only a bed, nightstand and dresser -- or perhaps a comfy reading chair in the master bedroom. (Banish that Stair Master to the basement.) Want to make the master bedroom feel even larger? Swap out the king-size bed for a queen-size bed.

Another tip: Stagers used to push all the furniture to the walls to try to make a room feel bigger. Pull furniture two or three inches out from the walls. When possible, allow the corners of a room to be visible. 

9. Think vignettes. Vignettes are groupings of accessories, usually in threes. It could be three pieces of art on the wall; it also could be candlesticks, something tall, medium and short. It's about shapes and color, which help draw the visitor through the room and make the room visually interesting. Think of them as eye candy.

10. Lighten up. You want as much light to come in as possible. Remove unneeded blinds. If there's drapery, try to make it as sheer as possible, or pull it to the side. You want people to come in and say, 'I could live here. It's nice and bright.' "

A general rule of thumb: According to the National Association of Realtors, the best return on a homeowner's investment for staging is when between 1% and 3% of the home's asking price is spent on staging, which typically gets a return of 8% to 10%.

Now that you know some of the work and thought that goes into staging, start your decluttering. And be ruthless

Compliments of Resource One Realty

1740 E. Matthew Dr. – De Pere, WI 54115

920-983-5450

www.resource1gb.com