Would you accept a $10,000 higher price on a property you wanted to sell if it meant your furniture needed to be rearranged? Believe it or not there are some people who are so attached to the way they live in their homes that they don’t want to rearrange any furniture or change anything. This is understandable. Our homes are our safe havens but when it is time to sell it is very important to de-personalize it as much as possible. Hiring a REALTOR (R) who has the skills to stage or the contacts with a professional stager gives home sellers an advantage over those that do not. This equals money in the pocket of the home seller.
Staging a home isn’t about decorating, it is about placing things to accentuate the strongest features of the home. The “things” can be as big as a bed or as small as towels. Sometimes staging can be as simple as washing windows, clearing off the countertop, removing family photos and eliminating clutter. If a potential buyer walks into a house that is completely filled with the contents of the current owner they can’t “see” room for themselves there.
In selling a home, simple really is best. As a REALTOR (R) one of the services I offer my clients is home staging. Sometimes this means moving furniture out of the house to storage, sometimes it involves moving furniture from one room to another and sometimes it involves completely staging a vacant home. Something like this will show potential buyers a great bistro set in the kitchen for example where they can read the morning news and enjoy a cup of coffee. The space was there but now it has been shown in it’s best light. The buyer can imagine living there, but with something like a bistro set it also provides a place for the buyer and buyer’s agent to sit down in the home and write a contract to purchase the property.
Last week I showed a client a home here in Alexandria that had just come onto the market that day. By five in the evening when his offer to purchase was submitted as quickly as possible, there was already another offer the sellers were considering submitted just moments before. A table to write a contract at is something I will always provide at my listings because time is of the essence in real estate. Anything that can be done to facilitate ease in home buying and selling isn’t a luxury, it is a necessity. A stressful process by nature, a REALTOR (R) can make a big difference in providing simple things to make the process more comfortable.
Staging also isn’t limited to the inside of a property. It can be bright potted flowers at the front door, and a cozy conversational area set up in the back yard.
This property I staged with plants, two chairs and yard lanterns. It took the yard from being just a small space to being a sacred space. It ended up one of the top reasons the buyers purchased the property. They could see themselves having a morning cup of coffee there.