Home Staging Do’s
*Set your listing price by utilizing area comparables, not based upon what you need to buy that ostrich farm.
* Put personal collections away someplace safe, like a bank vault in Zurich.
* Invest in a fresh coat of paint and get 150 percent green back on your investment.
* Disclose everything, especially the stuff you are tempted not to.
* Fix all running toilets, or risk flushing profits down the drain.
* Remember that “outside” is the new “inside.” Show off all of your living spaces.
* Visit model homes to see how neutrality and spaciousness are made to feel so inviting.
* Grind a lemon in the garbage disposal – it smells great and it’s such great exercise.
* Display the kind of plants that aren’t injection-molded and painted in a factory somewhere overseas.
* Keep your day job. Hire an agent and assist them in doing what they do best.

Home Staging Don’ts
* Rationalize that a higher asking price means you will have more wiggle room. You could wind up sitting idle on the market with a house full of wiggle room.
* Respond to lowball offers with a counter — instead, respond with an invitation to re-submit.
* Refer to a leaky foundation as a central humidifier.
* Make your house smell like a cherry orchard or a department store perfume counter.
* Air your dirty laundry. This includes leaving bills and private papers out, or, of course, actual dirty laundry.
* Take your prospects on A Complete History of The Kopecki Repairs & Renovations Tour.
* “Clean up” by stuffing all the closets.
* Leave unfinished DIY jobs for the buyers’ honey-do list.
* Defer yard work. Your house only gets one chance to make a first impression. Overgrown shrubs and broken gutters are the real estate equivalent of dandruff.
* Think licks from Rex the Bulldog will help generate more offers.