Maximize your sale price

As seen in Fortune Magazine
By Ellen Florian, FORTUNE
March 3, 2006: 11:04 AM EST

As the housing market cools, it’s more important than ever to pull out all the stops…six tricks of the pros for getting top dollar.

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) – There are several surefire ways to boost the value of your home (a Viking stove and an in ground pool certainly never hurt).

But for sellers, there’s only one way to maximize your investment that can A) be done in just a few days, B) can cost less than a plane ticket, and C) won’t involve copious amounts of dust and contractor bills.

It’s called staging—that is, spiffing up your home in a number of small ways — and it’s getting more and more popular as the housing market cools and sellers try and set their homes apart.

“The way you live in your home and the way you market a house are two different things,” says Barb Schwarz, the CEO and founder of StagedHomes.com, who has personally staged more than 5,000 homes over the past 33 years. “You have to think of your home as a product.”

A home that Schwarz recently staged in Seattle had been on the market for nine months at an asking price of $1.4 million. Three weeks after investing $8,000 in staging services (the average cost of staging is $3,200), the sellers received an offer for $1.9 million—$500,000 more than the asking price.

Staged homes also sell faster, according to Schwarz—an average of seven days compared to 45 days for unstaged homes.