How to Stage Your Home when you havePets

This week on the blog we have a Guest.  Alice Robertson is back to discuss how to stage your home so buyers don't know you have pets.  This is a topic I am passionate about as I have a cute little cat named Sabrina.  While I love her, I know that a lot of buyers are sensitive to pets.  Maybe even allergic!

Of course dogs and cats are wonderful family members, but potential home buyers aren’t going to see them that way. When you want to sell your home, you want to make it as attractive as possible. That means staging your home so buyers never even know that you have pets, and it isn’t as hard to do as it sounds.

Move Your Pets

When pets are out of sight, they're out of potential buyers' minds. If possible, get your pets out of the house completely when it's time to show your property to potential buyers. Take them to a dog boarder for the day. Or send them on a little vacation and have a family member or close friend watch them.

Clean Away the Evidence

You get so used to your home that you stop noticing all those little problems and all the telltale signs that pets live on the property. Potential buyers will notice, so take some extra time to clean up the evidence. Cats and dogs leave hair everywhere, so you must vacuum and lint roll every single fabric in your home before you show it to potential buyers. Take the litter box and put it outside, if you can, so the odor won't linger inside your house and so buyers don’t have to see it at all.

Put away all your pet-related items, including food bowls, toys, cat trees, and even photos of your pets you may have scattered around the house or stuck on the refrigerator door. According to Prep This House, keeping pet-related items out of view will make your home much more attractive to home shoppers.

Get Rid of Odors

Getting rid of the visual evidence of your pets isn't going to be enough to sway all those potential home buyers because your pets also leave behind something invisible: odor. Even if you can't smell it, people who don't own pets can. Before you show your home, give it a good cleaning to remove odors.

First, open the windows. According to House Logic, this will go a long way toward removing those pet odors. Also, don’t use a lot of heavy, perfumed air fresheners because buyers will know you're trying to cover up smells. Stick to odor neutralizers and natural scents, or you'll be showing them your hand instead of playing it smart.

Deep Cleaning for Odor Control

Use vinegar cleaner to scrub counters, cabinets, appliances, walls, doors, and baseboards. Vinegar is a natural odor neutralizer, and it will leave behind a clean smell—rather than a smell of cat or dog. Wash all the fabrics, too. That means curtains, bedding, small rugs, pillow covers, and anything that can fit into the washing machine or the sink.

Have your carpeting and upholstery professionally cleaned to totally eliminate lingering odors. In Chicago, the average price to clean carpets or rugs is $124 to $234, according to HomeAdvisor. That's a small price to pay if it means increasing the offers you’ll receive from buyers.

Successful Staging

Realtors, who are professional home sellers, say that good staging goes a long way toward selling your home. Proper staging can mean decluttering, moving furniture around, and putting out fresh flowers. And when you’re a pet owner, you’ll want to remove signs of your pet’s presence. Do it well, and you will get closer to that sale.

Photo credit: Pexels