Staging is the act of “dressing” a home that is being sold in order to make it more appealing to buyers. This includes filling an unfurnished home with appealing furniture or optimizing the arrangement of a seller’s current furniture.
Staging allows buyers to envision how a home looks when it is “lived in”.
Sellers can hire professional staging companies to furnish the home for the duration of the listing.
Studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that properly staged homes sell in a quicker manner at ultimately the higher price. An agent should recommend that sellers stage their properties, if feasible. Staging can create a “homey” atmosphere that meets the expectations of a buyer which may allow for the property to be sold either faster or at a higher price.
While there is a plethora of characteristics of a house that staging can optimize visually, it can also hide some of the lesser coveted aspects of the property. If there is any work that needs to be done or damage that needs to be repaired, staging can be a band-aid of sorts in patching up the blemishes that would otherwise be evident.
Quick Tips On How To Stage A House In Order To Sell
It’s important to update and fix any maintenance issues that may not be able to be hidden by rearranging furniture or focusing attention to other areas. If wallpaper is chipping or a room needs to be repainted, it may be in the best interest of the buyer to make these changes in order to maximize the potential of the property.
The home exterior is vital for a seller as it is the first portion of the property that the buyer sees. Washing the outside of the house, replanting or maintaining plants/flowers, and power washing the patio can all be smaller scale modifications that can significantly improve the look of a home.
If there are unused rooms in the house, moving in unused furniture or staging it as an office or home-gym may allow for a buyers imagination to run wild where a blank room may feel useless.
Having the lighting in a house pop can increase the mood and vibe of a home which plenty of home buyers base their purchases off of. Cleaning windows, replacing all light bulbs, and opening shutters or blinds may create a whole new look for some rooms or parts of the house.
Different Methods of Staging
Due to the amount of emphasis that is being placed on how a property is staged, there has been a rise in full-service professional home staging. Depending on what company is being used, some may charge upwards of $300-600 a room while others may take a small percentage of the final home’s sale price.
There are stagers that can be hired to live in the home and make sure that all of the amenities and characteristics of the house are properly displayed and laid out. These live-in stage companies are especially useful in situations where the seller lives in another city or state and cannot attend to the property as often as they would like.
There are home-stagers who will come in after a homeowner has cleaned and gutted any unnecessary items. They will do everything from rearranging furniture so that a room looks bigger to implementing friendlier decor which all goes into showing the house off in the best possible light.