Professional Home Staging Advice That Will Make All the Difference When Selling Your House
In our most recent blog article, we talked about how there really is no such thing as a “perfect home” when buyers are looking at houses. Home sellers may beg to differ because they all think their home is “perfect.” That’s why this week we want to talk about the process from their perspective. More specifically, we want to talk about the art of home staging and marketing.
Whenever The Cyr Team takes a new listing, we immediately bring in a professional home staging consultant. The goal is not only to get the house presented in the best way possible for potential buyers touring the home. It is also about making the home marketable for internet searches.
Getting Your House Internet-Ready
The simple fact is that most home buyers in this digital age will first be looking at homes online. Whether they are searching the MLS, Zillow or a specific real estate agent’s page, they will be able to preview the house through photos, videos and descriptions well before they schedule an appointment to go look at it in person. A big part of today’s staging strategy boils down to how to make the home look its best in those online photos and videos. You want your property to stand out from all the rest and look as nice as possible. If it looks bad in the digital search stage, you won’t get nearly as much foot traffic and that severely decreases your chances of getting a good offer.
Emotional Attachments
One of the biggest challenges of home staging is dealing with the seller’s emotional attachment to the property. As we mentioned in the previous article, home buyers are buying a house and turning it into a home. Home sellers, therefore, need to take their home and turn it back into a house before it’s ready to sell.
No matter how long you’ve owned the property or your reasons for selling, odds are you’ve developed some level of emotional attachment to the house. The longer you live there, the harder selling it will usually be. It is your “home” and you made it your own with your décor, furniture, upgrades, repairs and renovations. That makes it tough to strip some of these personal elements away when it is ultimately listed for sale. Just remember you might be selling the house, but you always get to take your memories with you!
Two key strategies for staging a home are decluttering and depersonalizing. Let’s explore these concepts further…
Minimizing the Clutter
Most of us tend to build up a lot of stuff over the time we live in a home. Photos, knick-knacks, decorative pieces, house plants, kids’ trophies, you name it—these are things that are important to you and you like having them around your living spaces. However, they aren’t really as important to a potential buyer. Removing some of the clutter is helpful to make the space more inviting to anyone who walks into the house. Make it look clean and as roomy as possible, and that will make a significant difference.
Turning the Home Back into a House
Depersonalizing a living space is often the hardest thing for a seller to accept during the home staging process. Like we just said, though, personal touches really aren’t as important to the buyer as they are to you. In fact, they can significantly detract from the appeal of a house they are thinking about buying. You love your stuff, but it makes the property still feel too much like it’s “yours.” Buyers should be able to walk into a house and be able to imagine it as “theirs.” They can see the potential and envision how they can make it their own. A good staging expert will be able to help you accomplish this for the most effective sale.
Other staging tips include applying a fresh coat of paint, removing wallpaper, upgrading to more modern fixtures and rearranging furniture to make each room look as spacious as possible. Sometimes, it’s worthwhile for a stager to bring in some display furniture to fill empty rooms or replace something that looks a bit too dated.
Proven Real Estate Advice
We’re really just scratching the surface on the larger topic of selling a home and getting a house ready for sale. It will be one we talk about often on The Cyr Team Blog as we aim to educate both home buyers and home sellers through our experience as a leading local real estate team
If you are getting ready to sell in the tri-state area of Southeastern Pennsylvania, Northern Delaware or Southwestern New Jersey, contact The Cyr Team today for a no-obligation home selling consultation and for more information about our staging and marketing processes that will get your home sold quickly and for the best possible price. We look forward to working with you.