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One of the hottest trends to sell a home today is home staging, an interior decorating technique for making the most of your home's attributes and making it more attractive for a potential buyer. Home staging has been known to boost home sales prices, as well as quicken the amount of time the home stays on the market. But the question is: What is the pricing for home staging-and is it worth it?
People today are hiring low-cost real estate agents or doing FSBO to save as much money as possible on their real estate transactions. To such a degree this is becoming a trend that I wonder if this home staging service is really one people will jump at. And if so, will it be worth it? Basic staging is something you can research and do yourself for free.
I've always considered it as a supplemental responsibility of a hired seller's agent to advise on how to stage a home (or what needs to be fixed/painted/decorated just so, etc). I guess I'm just providing a different perspective.
Staging = decluttering. We rented a POD and loaded it with mainly kids toys and other bric a brac ... didn't do any good though. We live in a stinky market for resales.
I toured a home with a huge "issue": the kitchen was tiny and closed off from the rest of the home. It had single pane windows and creaky floors. It sold for full price the first day on market because it had been staged inside and had major curb appeal.
I think it's only worth it if you have an empty home to sell, or if you are trying to sell a pricey home and your current set-up doesn't match the home's value. (a nice way of putting that your decorations and furnature are ugly and/or old)
If you're just selling the average home, just cleaning, removing anything that you don't NEED, and even limiting the amount of furnature in each room should be enough to sell your home.
I have sold a few homes and have a routine that I go through when I have lookers coming. Everyone always comments on what a beautiful home I have, how clean it is etc...
There are just a few things you need to do and I don't think you need to hire anyone to pull it off. I do let my 2 teenage girls keep their room to their own tastes though. Thes rest of the house gets transformed in about an hour and almost makes me want to keep it!
I'm getting ready to pursue a degree in Interior Design. In the meantime, I'm going to start some home staging on the side. I just contracted my 1 bed condo in 6 days while my lower priced competitors have been listed for 6+months. The average list time for 1 beds in my market is 98 days. Prior to staging the same property (in a better market) was unsold after 1 year. (before/after pictures are below).
If you don't even know what Better Homes & Gardens is, or if you don't have time to do any research first, then I'd hire some help. It'll be worth the money.
About painting walls. People often forget about how the carpet will look with the new paint. That pale yellow looks great next to white trim, but can make tan carpet look pinkish.
Other things that make a difference: The realtor and the camera. You can tell that neither were as good in the older images. TIP: Go to Activerain.com and find the highest ranked realtor for your area. This is a great site and I got a great realtor this way. He's 50% of my success in this sale. He's great at marketing property and that's important!
It's just my personal preference, but I'd rather see an empty house so I can picture my own furnishings, where they'd fit, how I'd arrange them. I could care less what's about the stuff that belongs to someone else. Rooms look bigger that way, too.
It's just my personal preference, but I'd rather see an empty house so I can picture my own furnishings, where they'd fit, how I'd arrange them. I could care less what's about the stuff that belongs to someone else. Rooms look bigger that way, too.
Amen! I prefer that houses be empty and I wish we could afford to move and have 2 mortgages so we could have our current home show empty. It's funny, people's expectation levels are so high now with shows like "sell this house" and "designed to sell". We had a showing last week and the hoity toidy agent and buyer (saw them drive up in their bmw suv) said our house looked "worn" and "not sharp". hmmm, let's see, 8 year old home that's had 7 children living in it .. I guess our fresh paint and new shiny hardwood floors don't count for much eh?
When we put our last house on the market, we invested in a storage unit and put everything in there that we did not need. We painted the main rooms a neuteral color, removed all the family pics, extra furnishings, junk off the fridge, and kept all the counters and built-ins clear. I even put the toothbrushes away in the bathroom vanity before a walk through. Somedays I just threw what ever I was doing, the kids, and the dog in the van and walked the beach.
This enabled the buyer to see himself living in the home. It also made it look like 5 people lived comfortably in the ranch sized home (NOT!)
This did not cost much. Just check out sites like realtor.com and you will see the pics that turn you off. What buyers may see as clutter (ie:fridge covered w/magnets and papers), you are not aware of.
My broker sold my home in 4 days.
suz
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Value of home staging
