In past years, staging your home wasn’t necessary, giving your home a good scrub and tidying up was enough to attract potential buyers. Today, we live in a much more visual society with many people across the country hiring staging companies to help give their home that little added touch. You may hesitate to hire such a company because in your eyes all that means is another added expense. Here is why staging your home is actually beneficial to selling your home.
You may wonder what exactly do home stagers do? Well, home stagers are much like interior decorators, they choose color schemes, fabrics, decor, and furniture that best fits your home. The job of the home stager is not to design your home to your personal likening, but to incorporate looks to fit everyone’s taste. Their job is to make your home look so good that anyone will come through your doors and fall in love.
The stager will come in and inspect your home from top to bottom. They identify specific qualities of your home and work to highlight them. They will then sit down with you and discuss their plan and costs. They will also help identify furniture or other home items that should be left out and ones that should be put away before your next open house. Stagers will even go as far as bringing in fresh flowers and popping a pie in the oven for a warm, homey scent. Some people feel this may be deceiving, but you will still need to submit the home’s physical condition in a disclosure statement.
In a study done by the Real Estate Staging Association, homes that were staged prior to being listed, sold 79 percent faster than homes that were not staged. Staging a home has shown to work in both cold and hot markets. For example, in an article by the New York Times, a couple living in Manhattan decided to sell their apartment. After six months on the market and cutting the asking price by $200,000, the couple decided to bring in a professional stager. They gave a place a complete makeover by adding new kitchen cabinets, modern decor, new doors, and fresh paint. The couple re-listed the apartment and within two months a bidding war ensued. In the end, the couple was able to sell their apartment for $200,000 more than their original asking price.
So can you stage your home yourself? The answer is you definitely can. Your home may already look like it’s straight out of a magazine, but it never hurts to have a professional eye give your home a look. They may add just a few highlighting touches that will increase your home’s desirability.
