You’ve made your home the perfect space for you and your family. After years of remodeling, taking advice from design magazines, and lovingly styling every room, you have put together a beautiful place to live. So, no need to make any changes before selling your home, right? Wrong.
The effect you’re trying to create when showing your property to potential buyers is one where they can see themselves living there. It can be difficult for people to see past your taste in décor to picture their own furniture and style replacing it, so potentially move on thinking this isn’t the home for them.
Even if your property has already been vacated, the lack of fixtures and fittings also makes visualizing living in a space a harder task. It’s also more difficult to assess the rooms’ true size if there’s no furniture in them.
This is where a staged home is at an advantage. Having a home decorated in a neutral palette with some thoughtfully placed furnishings and accessories is going to appeal to far more people than one stamped with the current owner’s taste in interiors or the unwelcoming rooms of an empty home.
Is it Worth the Effort?
So, is staging your home worth the time, money, and effort? The short answer is yes.
Put simply, staged homes sell more quickly and for more money, according to industry experts.
The Consumers Guide to Real Estate Staging reported homes not staged before listing spent an average of 143 days on the market while staged homes spent just 23 days.
According to the National Association of Realtors report, 58% of sellers’ realtors believe that buyers offer more money for staged homes.
Hire a Professional
If the job of stripping back your home and remodeling it as an appealing blank canvas to buyers feels beyond you, help is at hand.
Knowing the benefits, it offers, many real estate agents now offer a professional home staging service, which takes the hard work away, leaving you to reap the rewards of your picture-perfect home.
How do You Stage a Home?
The key points to remember when staging your home are the four Ds:
Depersonalize: Remove anything such as family photos and children’s artwork and any decorative elements such as wallpaper, which make it your home, instead of a potential new home for someone else.
Declutter: Clear surfaces, shelving, and floors of any unnecessary items. Decluttering will help your home look both tidier and more spacious.
Deep clean: Clean every inch of your home, from the marks on the skirting board to the cobwebs in the corners – you want it to look as spotless as a show home.
Decorate in neutral tones: Paint everywhere in neutral colors and then accessorize in the same palette using soft furnishings like cushions and throws and the odd scented candle or house plant. Remember, less is more.
Whether you do the job yourself or hire a professional, staging your home has huge benefits reducing a little of the stress involved when selling your home.
