Is it worth it to pay a home staging company?
So, you’ve decided to sell your home. The question is do you empty it of all the furniture and other items and offer it up to potential buyers empty? Or do you leave your own furniture there? Or do you pay a professional staging company to put things in it that will supposedly accentuate the good aspects and show off your home in a better light? Which one works the best?
What is home staging?
Just a few years ago if you were trying to sell your house likely you would have just scrubbed the walls, dusted off the light fixtures, and maybe lit a few scented candles to make the air smell nice so your open house visitors would get a good impression.
These days a lot of people are instead using professional home stagers. It’s kind of like hiring an interior decorator who has the skills and know-how to understand what colors and what kind of furniture or other paraphernalia will make potential buyers more interested in your house for sale. They are trained in knowing how to make a house look appealing to a wider range of viewers with a wide range of wants, needs and tastes.
What exactly do home stagers do?
A home stager’s job is to make people want to buy your house. So, they do whatever it takes to show off your property at its best. In order to do that, they first take a look at the whole house and figure out what will work best. Then, they get together with the seller and put together a plan along with explaining the costs and other requirements.
They are trained to highlight the property’s top features and know exactly how to make up for any possible shortcomings it may have. For instance, if your bedroom is rather small, they may tell you it would work better if the queen bed is removed and perhaps a twin bed is put there so the room looks bigger.
They also tell you straight out which items of your own furniture or other possessions can be left in the house and which just have to go if you want potential buyers to take your property seriously. In fact, they may just suggest you wait to stage the home until you have removed all your stuff so they can bring in things from their company that they believe will show off your house better.
They will also explain to you things that have to be fixed prior to an open house like landscaping if you have a horrible yard (i.e. get rid of those dead flowers and brown patches in the yard, etc.), if the house should be painted, or if anything in the house needs to be repaired. Be aware, all that would have to be done at additional costs and they wont be the ones setting it all up.
Then, they bring all their own furniture, curtains, etc., to fill up the house and even spruce it up with things like a fragrant vase of flowers or a delicious smelling batch of cookies in the kitchen’s oven. Anything to make the house seem more like home to your potential buyers.
Research shows staging benefits sellers
These days the housing market can be slow in some cases and sometimes there is a lot of competition from other homes for sale in your area. If you hire stagers while your neighbors just wing it on their own, chances are your home will be seen in a better light than the other one. Stagers can make your home look like the hottest house out there on the market and sometimes cause it to make buyers go into a bidding war that nets you even more cash for your sale!
In fact, this a study by the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents reported that more than 80 percent of home buyers were likely to be distracted from imperfections a house may have and then fall in love with it and buy more than the seller is asking. The report even warned potential buyers to not let this sort of thing sway them when they go house hunting!
So, if you truly want your house for sale to be THE home in the area that everyone is dying to look at and that is sure to sell faster than the average, consider getting a professional home staging company to set you up for success!
