This is a good example of what a homeowner can do by themselves to get their property ready for market. There are really only three things that will help a property sell. Location, Condition and Price. The only thing you can do anything about are condition and price. So make sure you do your best with condition, before considering a price change.

[photopress:jb2.jpg,full,center]

This 3 bedroom townhome in Brookwood Place in Bothell was already on the market with these before photos when Jeremy Keener and I arrived with nothing but a camera. We did not bring anything with us for staging this townhome to recreate the “stage” except what the owner already had in the townhome. Everything that was in the room is still in the room, just arranged a little differently.

[photopress:jerb2.jpg,full,center]

As you can see, this is the same room. The main change is to show the townhome’s best selling feature. By opening the blinds so that the photo in the mls shows the green out the window, a prospective buyer can readily see this prime feature. The “copy” did say it “backs to greenbelt”, but a picture speaks a thousand words. So we opened the blinds and let the greenbelt show.

[photopress:jdrbf_1.jpg,full,center]

Transforming the dining room was easy. Mostly we just moved the sofa, which you will see in the living room photos, so it wasn’t blocking the entrance to the dining area. The tall piece in the corner was moved up behind the folded out futon in the bedroom photo above. The owner had already placed the tablecloth, table runner and pictures.

[photopress:jerdr.jpg,full,center]

We ditched the folding chairs into a closet. The room is big and bright without the chairs, so we left it that way. We reversed the sofa and loveseat, but I couldn’t get the sofa corner to fit totally out of the dining room entryway, so we simply took the blanket throw from the back of the sofa and draped it to help camoflouge the dark sofa corner intruding on the dining entry space.

[photopress:jlrbf_1_2_3.jpg,full,center]

The living room was just too crowded with stuff. We pulled the big 3 foot ottoman out of the room and put it in the 3rd bedroom, which is on the main level and used as an office. We put the blue doggie bed in there also. We reversed the couch and loveseat to make more room walking into the dining area.

[photopress:jerlr.jpg,full,center]

We moved the coffee table into the center space between the couch and loveseat. We found the mantle items in other places, the center “picture” being a placemat. The throw pillows on the sofa ended up upstairs on the beds. We opened the blinds a tad to bring the green of the outdoors, inside. Other rooms were arranged as well, and it took less time to transform the townhome than it did to write this post.