Staging Your Home

Although a home may be beautiful, clean, and well-styled, this is not a substitute for professional staging. Staging a home for sale is not a new concept, but it is a practice that is gaining popularity in the current real estate market. It can be difficult for sellers to detach from their personal items and their ideas of how their home should look. However, professional home staging can take a listed home to a whole new level and appeal to many more buyers. Here are some reasons why we love good staging and what we think it can do for your listed property.

Let Your Home Do The Talking

While your home speaks to you and reminds you of all things pleasant and comfortable you have to ask yourself, what is your home saying to a potential buyer? Our homes are personal. That is okay because we live there. However, how you live in a home is not how you sell a home. Our homes often tell a story of our life – our travels, interests, hobbies, and memories marked everywhere with artifacts and photos. When listing your home for sale you don’t want potential buyers to know the story of your life. You want them to imagine the story of THEIR life fitting into your home.

The main goal of staging is to let your home do the talking. Make your home speak to potential buyers in a compelling and positive way. A well-staged home will let buyers know whether the layout will fit their needs. Whether that extra bedroom would be a good office for them. Or, whether or not the size is right. Staging your home helps to depersonalize it. Although no one wants to live in a depersonalized home, it helps potential buyers to see how they can make the home their own.

Be Memorable For The Right Reasons

Whether we like it or not, buyers and agents tend to recall homes with special labels they create for them. I’m sure you recall your first home hunt. All the names you and your agent came up with for the ones you viewed. The apple house was the one with the apple-themed kitchen and decor in every corner. The musician’s home was the one with guitars propped up on the walls and posters in every room. The cat house was the one where you kept stepping around cat beds, scratching posts, and litter boxes as you navigated the hallways.

A well-staged home will not be free from goofy and entertaining labels. However, the labels received will be memorable for the right reasons – not for the insignificant or distracting ones. Every home and property has special and distinguishing features. This is what you want to accentuate when showing your home to potential buyers. Earning labels such as the home with the grand entryway, the home with an open layout, or the home with the outdoor living space are ones that are sure to get you a second viewing and eventually a great offer.

Why Not Do Home Staging Yourself?

Many sellers ask their agents, why can’t we rearrange and stage the home ourselves? Sure staging has its inconveniences. It costs money. Some of the items you use or like to see on a daily basis will be moved around. And, the home you have grown so used to living in will begin to feel like it’s not your own anymore. Unfortunately, staging is not a DIY activity. Good staging requires an unbiased third party to enter your home with objectivity and neutrality. It requires a good eye for design and natural beauty of homes. Most importantly, it requires the ability to honestly tell you what furniture works for your space and what does not.

Often times homeowners take these suggestions personally but do your best not to. Your home stager is not saying your furniture is ugly or outdated, they are merely letting you know that it doesn’t accentuate the best feature of the room or is drawing attention away from the most noteworthy accents of the home.

Hiring a stager doesn’t mean all your furniture must go. The best stagers can work with what you have, rearranging and relocating your furniture and decor to accentuate the best features of your home. They will most likely relocate some of your belongings to the garage or outdoor storage places, but they can often utilize a lot of your existing furniture. With the addition of a few hand-picked pieces from their collection and some well thought out wall and shelving decor, your home will be ready for showings in no time.

Let Your Property Shine

Staging is by no means a requirement for our listings, and many homes sell just fine and rather quickly without staging. But we have found that a simple and professional staging job can really bring out the best features of a property. For homeowners interested in selling their home in the shortest amount of time, and for the most money possible, appealing to a large variety of potential buyers is important, and that’s exactly what staging can do for your home.

If you are thinking of selling or are in need of professional home staging for your upcoming listing reach out to The Mower Group. Although we don’t provide staging for our clients, we have some great local contacts who are true professionals at home staging and do a beautiful job with the listings we refer them.