Home Staging Help

Tips on how, why, and who should stage a home for sale

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INTRODUCTION TO HOME STAGING

Home staging is commonly known as the art of preparing a home for sale in a way that allows prospective buyers to envision themselves in the home, in turn helping it to sell faster and for more of a profit. When a market is soft and there are many homes competing against one another for sale, it's important to consider the home as a 'product', and careful attention must be given to how the product is marketed. It has been said that most buyers decide how they feel about a home within the first 8 seconds of seeing it. The bottom line is, the better the appeal, the more people who can see themselves living in the home - increasing the chances of a successful sale.

The primary goal of staging a house is to essentially increase the number of people interested in your home so that you can have better odds of selling the home in a quicker time frame. Attracting potential homebuyers is done by enhancing the outdoor curb appeal of the home, and then making the indoors welcoming and generic so that the buyer can actually see themselves living in the home. Staging a house for sale can actually increase the property value if it's done properly. By fixing items that are broken, cleaning the home thoroughly (including fresh coats of paint if necessary), and giving the outdoor landscaping a good clean up and upgrade, the home will be at an advantage once it's been put on the market.

The idea to stage a home for sale is not a new one, and has actually been a marketing tool for many real estate professionals and interior designers since the 1970s. But the continued demand for these services, and the rise and fall of the resale market have made it possible for many people to enter this industry as their career, offering their services to those needing to sell their home and to real estate professionals seeking assistance. With the number of publications, television shows and online interior design courses, home staging has become a craft that many have mastered the art of. The shear popularity and demand for these services has created many home staging professionals, and has launched quite a few home staging training courses, helping to teach real estate professionals and business individuals about the basics of interior redesign, including many home based professionals.

There are many techniques for home staging, and because there are really no industry standards or specific guidelines to follow, there is still a strong sense of creativity to the process as well. However, there are a handful of absolutes that are necessary in order to be a successful home stager, such as removing all personal elements from the home, cleaning up any clutter, rearranging the furniture to maximize space, painting where necessary, and finally fixing or updating old fixtures in the home.

Homes that have undergone a home staging have statistically shown much better than those that have not. This is most definitely due to the efforts made to showcase the home as a product, ensuring that the 'package' is desirable from the inside out, and not giving off the impression that the prospect is walking through someone else's home, but yet they are entering their future home and they are visualizing their lives taking place in that space. If the home for sale is not currently lived in and has no furnishings, it is recommended that the seller use rental furniture to help showcase each room's general purpose. By viewing rooms with furnishings, the potential buyer will be able to better visualize the spaces and may actually find the rooms more inviting and larger than they would have without the furniture to demonstrate the spaciousness. Those homes that already have furnishings may find that when it undergoes a home staging, some of the furniture may need to be put away in storage to make room for the interior redesign that is recommended.

Staging your home for sale will ultimately help in turning around the sale much quicker than expecting prospective buyers to either 'take it or leave it'. And when competing with so many homes that may even be in the same neighborhood, there is no better way to distinguish your home as 'the one' than to invest in the art of home staging to ensure a number of interested buyers.