Selling a house can be stressful.
If you are selling a house, likely some life event is happening simultaneously. Maybe you took your dream job with an amazing company but it’s in another state. Or maybe you realized that adding a third kid to 1200 square feet took the noise level to uncharted decibels and you need your sanity back. Or maybe your knees finally convinced you that having less stairs is ideal.
Your head is spinning when your realtor adds this little jewel.
“You should also consider hiring someone to stage your home for you.”
Nope, just no. Surely that is a superfluous item you can ignore.
Right?
Before getting into the reasons to stage, let’s start with an understanding of what staging is not. Staging is not someone coming into your home and telling you everything you love about your home is wrong. Staging is not removing everything from every room to make the room “appear bigger.” Staging is not replacing every scrap of color in your house with beige.
In other words: Staging is not about you.
Then what IS it all about?
Staging is about your potential home buyers.
It’s about their wants and their desires. Staging is about using design principles to create an ideal space for a home buyer. When they walk into your house, you don’t want them to imagine you living there. You want them to imagine themselves living there.
Think about it – your potential buyers are probably also in a stressful life event. They are overwhelmed by their own to do list. So, if you set the stage and create the scene for them, when they enter your house, they will immediately say, “Oh, I can imagine drinking my coffee in that corner” or “This bedroom is so calming, I’ll sleep wonderfully in here”. Then you, my staging-hesitant friend, have accomplished your goal.
You have created a positive emotional response with the buyer. And, as much as we are loathe to admit this because we all imagine ourselves as purely rational beings, emotions influence the sell.
Now, just because staging is ultimately for the buyer, that doesn’t mean you don’t get something out of it. A survey from the Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp found that STAGED homes spent half the time of un-staged homes on the market AND sold for more than 6% above the asking price!
Not too shabby for a superfluous task, right?
So, the next time you come to that staging item on your to do list, instead of skipping over it, consider making your appointment for a staging consultation to see how to turn your home into your buyer’s dream.