Staging your Home for Sell
Over the past few years “staging” has become an important part of selling a home in many markets. In Real estate 101, you are told that a house that shows well should sell faster and for more money that one that shows badly, all else being equal. I fact, agents will sometimes eliminates a house that shows badly from the list plan to show their buyers, unless they categorize it as a “fixer.”
The problem is that the vast majority of sellers simply do not know how to get their homes ready for sale. To most of them, it looks fine just the way it is. After all they have been living in it since they bought it and it is comfortable for them. Why should not be fine for the next owners? “ This kind of resistance can be difficult to overcome.
We deal with it by asking the sellers to take a few hours with our staging professional. Linda will help them to make some changes to the house, not major changes of course, but in order to make it more appeal for the potential buyers they need to put the right amount and right kind of furniture, coloring, and effects in the home to show it off. We offer this service to our sellers for free as part of our marketing strategy because we think that staging makes the home looks its best for buyers.
Look, buyers have no imagination. It is important to make sellers understand that telling a buyer that “a bookshelf would look great here” or to “to take away this couch and look at the extra space you will have” are spoken on deaf ears. You have to put the bookshelf in place and remove the couch before buyers can “see.”
Ideally the house should be staged before it’s shown to the first buyer. It is important the first impression that a house makes on a buyer, we refer to it as “curb appeal”. If it is positive, you will have a much easer time selling the property. If it is negative, you will spend most of the time trying to overcome it. You do not get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Remember a properly stage home should bring a top-market price, but it will not bring an above-market price. Staging does not turn a Ford into a Mercedes; it just makes the ford look the most presentable it can be. When promoting property to other agents and buyers, the best things you can say is that it “shows well.”
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