We tend to mention home staging often here on The Fun Times Guide, probably because it works. 

For example, in Tips For Staging Your House To Get The Highest Selling Price, Lynnette explains why home staging is so important:

If the home you're selling is brand new (or a flip), you should count on spending 1% of your home's asking price on "staging". In return, you can expect to get 10 times that back!

Still, house staging is quite an elusive creature.  How exactly do you stage a home?  What are all the items in the home you need to look at?  How much does it really cost to stage a house?

Before you utilize the 5 ways to sell your house fast, you first need to prepare your home for the sale. 

Why?

Because people aren't looking for "diamonds in the rough" right now. 

Your home must sparkle, in order for it to sell... fast! 

It’s no surprise that it is hard to sell a home these days.  Even in the best areas, homes can sit on the market for months and even years. 

While this is great for home buyers because they have their pick of homes, home sellers need to work extra hard to make a sale. 

The longer a house is on the market, the more it costs the seller:

You might lose out on your own home buying opportunities. 

Or you could lose more money -- especially if you have already purchased a new home, or need to get out of a home that you can no longer afford.

As a homeowner, you have to get creative about the ways you attempt to sell your home, since homes aren't selling very fast on their own these days.

Here are some creative ways to sell your house fast...

We've got the blueprints completed and printed for our new log home. We are about to sign on the dotted line for the loan. Now we're just waiting for the county's final approval before we break ground.

If all goes as planned, we should close by the end of the month and begin the excavation work to lay the foundation for our log home soon thereafter. With that in mind, it could be anywhere from 6 to 9 months before we move into The Fun Times Lodge (...wait til you see all the other fun names I've come up with for our log cabin home!).

Let The Home Staging Begin...

At the same time, I'm also trying to "de-personalize" our current house a bit -- which, they say, is one of the most important steps in "staging" your home.

I like at least 10% of a display space, such as a bookcase, to be empty. A coffee table and other practical surfaces should be only 10% full." -- Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, makeover expert on HGTV's "Small Space, Big Style"

With that in mind, here are some tips from the pro's about staging your home for resale. Hopefully, these staging tips will help you get top dollar for your home...