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"For someone who's an HGTV devotee, how could they have never heard of this," said the author of the forthcoming "Complete Idiot's Guide to Staging Your Home to Sell," due out in January 2007.

Turner, a Fairport, N.Y.-based author, said, "The goal of home staging is to make your home look as spacious, as well-maintained and as easy to live in as possible. If you can do that, you'll make more money."

With that in mind, remember the three staging steps: decluttering, cleaning, staging.

For decluttering, try the following:

"All of your closets, cupboards, any storage space, need to only be half full," Turner said. "Clear out everything, and box it up."

"The typical seller's definition of clutter is broader than what I'm talking about here. They'll pile papers in a corner and think that's OK because it's in a neat pile," Turner said. "There's just too much stuff in most of the homes for sale."

Remove excess furniture. Don't make the room look empty, but take extra chairs, cushions or end tables to a relative's house to make the room look bigger.

Take down personal photos.

You've decluttered -- now it's time to clean. Follow these steps.

"Make sure your home is odor-free," Turner said.

Wash fabrics, including curtains, upholstery and bed linens. "Fabric retains the scent of years past."

Finally, set the stage. Staging a home for sale is "a combination of marketing and interior design," advised Turner.

"You're positioning your home as the perfect choice for the majority of buyers who come through," she said. "Fix any problems or projects. Missing grout in a bathroom somewhere, even though it may be a minor problem, you need to fix it."

A well-maintained, clean, neutral-hued home suggests to prospective buyers that they'll move in with no maintenance to tackle right away, she noted.

Lynne Schreiber

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