Stage my hellstrip...and staging resources needed.

June 25, 2007 7:07 AM

What is the best thing to plant in the hellstrip/parkway in terms of selling a house? Also, best resources for staging a house to sell?

The grass in between the sidewalk and the street was so horrible that my husband hacked it all out...what is the best thing to replace it with if we're looking to sell the house (California)? A fair number of houses in our neighborhood have plantings of varying degrees of niceness. The rest of the yard is surrounded by white picket fence, so it doesn't need to blend in to the rest of the yard. More grass? Groundcover? Nice garden?

Also...resources for staging a house? We're not ready to sell yet, so I don't want to hire someone, but I'd like to start heading that way as I fix things up.

posted by sLevi to home & garden (8 comments total)

Can you just throw some sod down there? I dunno about California, but it's not that expensive around here.

Also, are all houses 'staged' to sell? I was under the impression that it was something that was only done on TV...
posted by unixrat at 7:23 AM on June 25, 2007

I would agree with sod. You don't know what the next owner's will want, so you should make it look as nice and normal (bland) as possible. Remove all personal items. Same for the inside of the house.
posted by sulaine at 7:31 AM on June 25, 2007

owners.
posted by sulaine at 7:31 AM on June 25, 2007

Also, are all houses 'staged' to sell? I was under the impression that it was something that was only done on TV

You don't necessarily have to rent fancy furniture or repaint every room, but simply rearranging your stuff and cleaning a bit can help create better impressions of your house.

TV resources: Designed to Sell and Secrets That Sell
posted by puritycontrol at 7:55 AM on June 25, 2007

I would plant some flowering annuals in the strip: they will add instant and eye catching color to the front of your house and leave no enduring gardening legacy for the new owners to have to deal with (said by the person who is still weeding out ivy the previous owners planted 10 years ago).
posted by jamaro at 9:11 AM on June 25, 2007

I put down some decorative paving stones in our strip. I just used some stones and bricks that I had left over from other parts of the yard and made a mosaic patten. Then we bought a few flowering plants in pots and arranged them in a line running down the middle.

As far as prepping the house, the best advice I've heard was to remove as much as possible. The less stuff that is in a room, the bigger it will feel.
posted by Eddie Mars at 9:41 AM on June 25, 2007

1. Start decluttering - go room by room and throw out, give away or sell everything that you don't use or love - it will not only make the place look better but it saves money since you won't have to move stuff you don't really need. This will also make it easier to settle into the new place since you will have less stuff to unpack.

2. When you get closer, rent a storage locker and move out furniture to make the rooms look bigger. For example, just looking around my current family room - if we were putting hte house on the market, the extra folding chairs, the second dog crate, the fan and air purifier would all go into storage. I would also do another pass on the bookshelves either storing or getting rid of enough stuff that they don't look overflowing. The result should be a room that looks airy and spacious.

3. Where reasonable, make the house look more generic and less personal. We had orginally painted or wallpapered each room to reflect our own taste. When we got ready to move, we repainted everything a neutral off-white (after all, not everyone loves purple as much as my husband)
posted by metahawk at 1:42 PM on June 25, 2007

I'd put in sod in the strip.

Take pictures of every room. Looking at pictures of your own house really helps you see the stuff that looks bad. Look critically in every room for ceiling stains, scuffed paint, and anything not in good repair. If any room has out of the ordinary colors, consider repainting. Your hot fuschia bedroom may have suited you, but it might be horrifying to open-house visitors.

There are lots of sites with home-sellers advice. Make sure it's really clean, make sure it smells good when it's shown (keep slice-n-bake dough in the fridge or bread dough in the freezer) and make sure it looks its best.
posted by theora55 at 4:03 PM on June 25, 2007