The Garage Can Help Sell Your Home
They’re more than just for parking cars, stacking boxes, and holding trash bins. The garage can help sell your home, if you stage it right. Most homeowners might think of staging their kitchens and bedrooms but the garage is a feature that is playing an increasingly important role.
Here are some organizing tips to help you increase the sale of your home.
If you’re looking to entice buyers make sure your garage is organized, kept up and shows off some of the most important features like its storage capabilities. Storage is always a premium in homes and if your garage showcases closet organizers, hand shelving, and storage bins that can stash away seldom-used items or tools, buyers will find your garage a must-have item on their home-buying list.
Use walls and ceilings for storage. In my garage I had two loft-type storage areas built. They drop down from the ceiling a few feet and allow me to store multiple large plastic bins of seasonal decorations and items that I rarely use. Having the extra space allows you to get your boxes up off the ground which helps to make the room look larger. I have even placed curtains around the storage area so it hides the boxes and bulky items that I have stored up high.
Add lighting. It’s relatively inexpensive and yet this tip makes such a huge difference and increases the garage’s appeal. Replacing the single center bulb with a strip of lighting is a fantastic way to spark a buyer’s interest. Garages are often too dark and dreary. Adding an eight-foot fluorescent light strip will light up the room and make your garage shine.
Coat your floor. Concrete floor in the garage can show off the wrong things like those icky, ugly oil stains. But if you coat your floor with an epoxy resin-based paint or rubber mats and tiles, drippings and spills are easy to wipe up. The mats and tiles help to reduce the amount of dirt that gets tracked inside the garage and ultimately into the house. They also can help with insulation and noise reduction. For practical reasons, coating your garage floor is ideal but it also simply looks nice and is much more welcoming than a concrete floor.
Make sure your garage door opener is working quietly. Sounds silly but the first automatic garage door openers became commercially used back in the 1950s and now they’re a standard feature for most homes. Keep the garage door in the same theme style of the home, color and overall decor. Make sure the door doesn’t squeak when opening by either getting it checked out by the garage door company that installed it or sometimes all it needs is a good oil job to lubricate it. A noisy garage door opener could indicate to a buyer that it’s on the verge of breaking down.
Finish your walls and ceilings. Many garages are not finished but if you put up wall board you can complete the look of the garage and make it look much nicer. Be sure to make sure the garage is insulated before you finish it. That can save on your heating and cooling bills.
Fresh paint. Yes, painting the garage can add a lot. You don’t have to go wild with color–neutral tones are fine. However, if your garage is used for a workout area too, then a little stronger color like a deep blue might work great. It’s all about the overall theme of the room. Don’t be afraid to add a little style to your garage just don’t clutter it with too much decor so that your garage becomes more of a junk yard rather than an organized, clutter-free space.
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That’s a good focus area to attract a potential buyer, especially in a changing real estate market.