As a home seller, these days one of the first pieces of advice you are likely to receive from your real estate agent is that you should consider hiring a professional stager to come in and help you stage your home for sale. They may even have a suggestion for you in terms of who you should hire, as an increasing number of real estate agents work very closely with a professional stager they have had previous success with.
However, some homeowners balk at the idea. Some because they believe their home is in great saleable condition as it is, and that with a little bit of extra tidying up it will show fine. Others reject the idea of having their home professionally staged because they simply do not want to take on the extra expense at what often is a busy and stressful time.
There are big benefits to be gained from professional home staging though, it’s not just trendy, a bit of hype or your real estate agent’s attempt to upsell you. Here’s a look at five of the biggest of them:
Property Styling Ensures Your Property is Ready For Its Close Up
The vast majority of home buyers now begin their search online, browsing through Internet listings to get a ‘feel’ for the properties available to them in their chosen price range and neighbourhood and to ‘rule out’ properties that, based on those first impressions, they don’t think it would be worth their time to see in person.
This means that your home needs to be beautifully represented there in order to stand out from all the other listings would-be buyers will be scrolling through. When a home is professionally staged by a home staging expert the end result is that it is usually magazine cover ready, meaning it will photograph well and even be video worthy. Virtual walkthroughs are selling tactic increasingly used by real estate agents these days, and a staged home for sale makes for a really good ‘movie’.
Property Styling Increases the Perceived Value of Your Home
There are two values that the average home for sale has. The first is the actual dollar amount a home seller sets, usually with the help of their agent as an asking price. This figure is usually arrived upon based on solid facts and figures like comparable sales. The second, perceived value, is a far more subjective value. This value is what a home buyer thinks the home is worth. That perceived value is significantly heightened when a home is professionally staged.
A Property Styled home is more aesthetically pleasing and gives off more of a ‘luxurious’ vibe than one that is not, often resulting in potential buyers viewing it as ‘worth more’ than a similar property that is not. It also gives the impression that it has been better maintained in general, another thing that will add to its perceived value in a home buyer’s mind.
Home Staging Helps Buyers See Themselves ‘There’
As they view different homes for sale the one thing that every home buyer does is try to imagine what living in the home themselves might be like. Because home staging creates a neutral impression – free of distracting personalizations or the decor preferences of the current owners – it becomes far easier for them to do that and once they can, if they like what they ‘see’ they are far more likely to consider making an offer.
Home Staging Helps Home Sell Faster
Every real estate agent has two ultimate goals for every property they represent; to get it sold quickly and to get it sold at the best possible price, so anything that can help them achieve that can only be a good thing for both them and their clients. And according to agents, when they have been surveyed, a staged home will often sell faster than one that is not, one of the big reasons why so many of them do recommend that their clients consider home staging.
Property Styling Can Decrease Seller Stress
Every home that hits the market for sale has to be staged to a certain degree. Cleaning and decluttering are musts and there is almost always a certain amount of rearranging called for as well. When they hire a professional home stager a seller gains expert help – and often several extra pairs of hands – to do so. As selling a home is inevitably rather stressful in general this will all help keep those stress levels to a minimum.
