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Home stagers can make a number of small changes to a property that can dramatically shorten the time it spends on the real estate market while also increasing the final sales price. Home staging expert Debra Gould shares her five favorite tips for getting a house ready to sell:

1. Reduce drive-bys

Imagine you’re a homebuyer on a house-hunting mission. Your real estate agent has ten properties to show you on a Saturday afternoon. When you drive up to what could be your dream home, you see a rusted-out mailbox, broken handrail and children’s toys strewn across an un-mowed lawn. You don’t have any time to waste, so you’re probably going to say, “Let’s move on,” skipping the showing appointment entirely.

Curb appeal helps draw prospective buyers into your home. If the outside of a house looks unkempt, it creates an impression that the property is not cared for. To enhance curb appeal:

Ensure the lawn is freshly cut and that leaves are raked. In winter, snow should be shoveled from the driveway and walkways.

Make the entrance more welcoming with a seasonally appropriate planted urn or hanging plant.

Repair or replace any obvious defects. Often this is cheaper to do than a prospective buyer will imagine.

Make sure the walkways and porches are swept clean and garbage and recycling containers are tucked away at the rear of the house or in the garage.

Ensure the exterior gets a good pressure wash and the decks are scrubbed clean. It’s a good alternative to painting. Once everything’s clean, you might discover it doesn’t need to be repainted at all; perhaps just a touch-up will do.

2. Stash your keepsakes and keep your home clutter-free

Your treasured keepsakes may look like clutter to potential buyers. It distracts them from appreciating the house itself and can lead home buyers to reject your property. De-cluttering is essential. Tackle one area at a time so the task isn’t so overwhelming.

You’ll probably have to go through each closet more than once to get its contents down to the absolute essentials, but it will be worth the effort. Try setting a timer for 60 minutes and it will no longer seem like an endless task.

If you’re having a tough time parting with things, rent a storage locker so you can keep your beloved items while you’re selling the house, and then have them delivered to your new address after your move.

3. Avoid wandering eyes

You want to make sure that little problems in a room won’t cause a potential buyer to focus on one flaw after another, thinking about all the work they’ll have to do and how much less they should offer you because of it. You want them to see the bigger picture and imagine themselves living there.

Do a walkthrough to spot these typical problems. Look for chipped paint on the door frames, which can be filled in with “white out.” Peeling wallpaper should be glued back down. Ensure there are covers on all electrical outlets and light switches, and replace any that are cracked. Repair dripping taps and moldy caulking. These little things make a big difference in the buyer’s mind!

4. Color is your friend when it’s time to sell a house

In most cases, white walls look cold and sterile. If you have to repaint a home’s interior or some rooms in a home, choose a pleasing color palette that allows each room to flow nicely into the next. All colors should go together.

Try to repeat one signature color throughout a home. Maybe the feature color in one room can be used as an accent in the others, through accessories or throw cushions.

5. Make a big impact with a little art

Don’t just throw things on the wall where an old picture hook happens to be. Position art at eye level and use pieces that are appropriate to the size of the wall. Art with a large frame on a small wall can make the entire area seem smaller. Avoid religious art or anything edgy that could be offensive to some potential buyers.

These are just a few of the many things that can be done to improve your home’s appearance and to make it more appealing to homebuyers. While the steps can be time consuming, the results are worth it. A professional home stager makes the job much easier and can give you the specific steps you should take on your own. Stagers bring total objectivity and a creative eye to the process of decorating your house to sell. This increases your chance of selling your property faster and for more money.

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program with over 4,000 students worldwide. Gould is the author of four home staging guides and offers a Directory of Home Stagers to help homeowners and real estate agents locate home stagers who will decorate homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. © Copyright Six Elements Inc. Used with permission.

If you’ve walked Seward waterfronts lately, you might have come across the carcasses of common murres or you might have spotted bald eagles feasting on them. There’s been a lot of the carcasses spotted, and people are calling in, said Dr. Carrie Goertz, a staff veterinarian at Alaska SeaLife Center who also helps manage the stranding program and disaster response. Most of the murres are very thin and emaciated, indicating starvation, she said. The phenomenon is apparently a murre die-off, or “wreck,” and is probably caused by these small marine birds having exhausted their nutritional reserves, with the sudden bouts of cold temperatures and waves of poor weather in mid to late March pushing them over the edge to their deaths. Also, the fish biomass may not have coincided with when they were in the area, plus in a weakened state they’re easier prey for predators, or to get hit by cars, the latter two of which she saw examples of in the bird carcasses brought in to ASLC, Goertz said. The center vets did some cursory examinations of the murres they found, but are sending them to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey for more in-depth examinations.

Common murres eat small fish, and breed in rocky cliffs. They travel great distances seeking food.

These die-offs tend to be cyclical, and there have been other murre wrecks reported historically in the Seward area, although people observe that this one seems more pronounced than in the past. In 2005, a year after Dr. Goertz came to Seward, she remembers another die-off of common murres. They often occur at around the same time of year, before spring productivity hits. Common murre die offs, and other mass deaths of other auklet species have been reported in other coastal areas of South Central, and clear down the Pacific coast from California to Canada, and on the Oregon coastline.

Almost all of the dozen common murres this SCN reporter and her husband Robert spotted along the downtown Seward waterfront and Lowell Point last weekend had their bellies eaten out by scavengers, probably eagles but also by gulls and other critters. The bellies are less protected by bones, and thus easier to get at, Goertz said. There were several pairs of eagles perched in the trees above some of the carcasses, and another eagle on a post along Lowell Point Road, eating what appeared to be one.

There are lots of simple things homeowners can do on their own to decorate their homes to sell. They can get rid of clutter, repaint, clean or put out fresh flowers. So why hire a home stager?

Many homeowners are unsure of what paint colors to choose or where to move the clutter. The process of selling a home can be completely overwhelming. They often lack real estate knowledge about their local markets and how homes in their price range should look.

A home stager has the ability to look at a home with a fresh pair of eyes. They view the home as a highly critical buyer would see it. Home staging expert Debra Gould provides five examples of how a professional home stager can benefit you:

1. A home stager knows what’s needed to create the right environment quickly and at the lowest cost.
1. A home stager knows what homes in different price ranges look like and what’s selling. They will give homeowners suggestions that their real estate agent may be afraid to offer because the agent does not want to risk losing the listing.
1. A home stager is not emotionally attached to any of the home’s contents, which means that they can see the home in a way that someone who has been living there for years simply cannot. Using their fresh vision, they recommend the optimal way to rearrange existing furniture, art and accessories.
1. A home stager can quickly choose new paint colors, flooring, tiles, countertops or any number of finishes. They have a ready source of painters, cleaners, handymen, off-site storage and a myriad of other services that may be needed on short notice.
1. A home stager can bring in replacement furniture, accessories and art if what is there isn’t appropriate for the home’s target market or the home is empty.

Home staging is not just for multimillion dollar homes. Even for modest homes, staging can have a dramatic effect on the selling price and the number of days spent on the market. For example, one of the homes Gould staged had previously been on the market for months with the best offer being $350,000. She spent 90 minutes with the owner rearranging the furniture, putting items in storage and telling him what needed to be cleaned. He sold the house the following week for $361,000!

How many other (legal) ways can you think of to invest $600 and get an $11,000 return on your investment the following week?