A new business venture to help home sellers, home staging, assists property owners in preparing their home for the best possible sale. Home stagers visit your home and either tell you how to redesign it or actually do the work for you. These services do great work, but they don"t always understand interior design. They know what sells houses, but many home stagers could benefit from a little interior design and marketing psychology training to assure the homeowner of a top-dollar sale.

How does design psychology help stage your home for a top-dollar sale? Design psychology helps you with emotions: yours and your prospective buyers. You must learn to love your house at the same time you learn to let go of your home. When you remember why you bought your home in the first place and clean it up with love, your care radiates throughout. Your buyers pick up on the undercurrents in your home; they want to buy happiness and a new lifestyle. You need to let go of your home so that you can be objective about staging your house. Thinking of your house as an investment or product for sale clears your emotions to pack up your personal treasures, which showcase your personality. This means that you create a new setting for your buyers, one that allows them the freedom to visualize their own personal treasures in your rooms.

Design psychology also helps you make easy choices in your home makeover. Understanding the target buyers" emotions means that you know what to leave in your home and what you need to take out for staging. Beyond the usual de-cluttering and super cleaning, you stage your home with suggested activities that speak to your buyers" feelings. Home buyers desire to feel happy, relaxed, and smart about their home choice. Therefore, make over your home with design details, such as colors, lighting, patterns, and textures which support the buyers’ feelings. Happy colors depend on the selling season; use warm colors in cool climates and cool colors in warm seasons. Balance with relaxed colors like grays and sky blues. Stage "smart" activities like reading and playing chess.

Also, you will know, without a lot of agonizing, which colors to paint the exterior. For instance, perhaps you only need to repaint the front door to attract your specific type of buyer. If your property costs less than the average home in your market, you"re targeting first-time home buyers. These buyers--typically young and unsophisticated--prefer basic, uncomplicated colors. If you"re selling during warm weather, you want to offer a cooling oasis. Maybe, like 80% of houses, your home is basic tan or cream. In this case, you would choose blue or green to freshen your front door.

Design psychology methods help you makeover your home with the buyer"s profile in mind. House buyers pick the home they can"t live without, even if it costs more than the house next door. Stage your home to attract your target buyers" emotions and sell your home, fast, for top dollar.

Copyright (c) 2005 Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.

Jeanette Fisher, author of "Sell Your Home for Top Dollar--FAST!" "Home Staging for Top-Dollar Sales," and other books, teaches professional real estate investing seminars and Design Psychology college courses. For more articles on selling: http://www.sellfast.info Read about Home Staging: http://www.homestaging.us

When selling your home, you’ll want to fetch the best price possible for your home yet it so happens in many cases, that buyers give offers that just don’t meet your expectations. Of course, you will have to negotiate but you still may not end up getting how much you want. To ensure you get better offers and close in on a better deal, you need to make the buyer really want your home – you’ll have to impress him. You may think, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to spend on renovations out here.’ Well, there are ways you can go about adding value to your home without spending as with there obviously being ways to add value with spending. Of course, when it comes to spending on renovations, only do so if you think it’ll be justified a by a similar increase in the home’s sale price or it’ll considerably help improve the chances of you selling your home faster.

So how do you add value to your home so that you can quote a higher price or expect better offers for your quoted price? Here below are some tips:

Tips for the interiors of your home:

- Dark colors usually turn off most buyers. It’s advisable to paint your walls white or off-white. Lighter colors will also give a spacious feel to your home and make it look bigger.

- Clean and organize your basement, attic and garage.

- Clean everything – carpets, windows, mirrors, appliances … A clean and tidy house will make your home look more welcoming to prospective buyers.

- Repair any leaking roofs or walls you may have and paint over the water stains to show no sign of water damage. Replace any discolored wallpaper.

- Replace broken switches, tighten loose door knobs and eliminate any squeaky noise that may arise from any of the windows or doors in the house.

Tips for the exteriors of your home:

- Cut your lawn weekly while showing your home. Rake leaves and sweep the sidewalk when the house is to be shown. You may also want to plant more flowers or use potted plants to give more color and life to your landscaping.

- Paint or clean the front door. Also make sure there’s a neat door mat in the front entrance.

- Replace cracked window panes, if any.

- House painting would make your home look new although do so if it’s really necessary and after considering the costs involved.

Sprucing up the interiors and exteriors of your home is necessary if you want to get best value for your home. Expenditures may arise in doing up your home but it will only add to the sale value of your home and make it much easier for your home to sell in quick time.

Best of luck with your home sale!

Sameer S Panjwani is the CEO and Founder of ChoiceOfHomes.com - Sell / Rent your Home online.