Is it okay to have two home offices when staging? (sale, price)

[sarafinakate]

We are planning to move out of state this summer and are going to list our current home on the market in the next few weeks. We have six bedrooms. One downstairs, a master up, and 4 bedrooms (all Jack n Jill) up. The downstairs room is going to show as a guest room. Upstairs, my husband has a home office and I am also using the bedroom next to his as a home office. The other two are my children's rooms. Would it make a huge difference if I kept my home office? Or should I get rid of the desk and make it a guest bedroom?
I hired a stager and she suggested I get rid of my big cottage style desk and replace it with a small writing desk or make it a bedroom. What do you think?
Thanks!

[chet everett]

I completely agree with your stager. Ideally you would show this room as a bedroom but if you must continue to have TWO SEPARATE ROOMS dedicated to home office use YOU MUST get any oversized furniture out of there so buyers (who are faced with more nice inventory than they were a few years ago...) will not be mentally locked on to something.

Believe me when a qualified buyer shows up at a home with more than four bedrooms they are almost certainly going to be looking for flaws -- for familes that want / need space for a large number of kids they will want to be sure EVERY INCH of a room will allow them to walk around and picture "the bunks over here and the dressers over there and the hampers under there". While I am sure your over sized cottage style desk is lovely if it costs you a sale with a buyer that can't picture how big the bedroom reallly is you'll not get another shot to win them over...

[sarafinakate]

Thanks, Chet! I will plan on having it moved. I'm going to get a storage unit today for all my "clutter".

[TexasHorseLady]

I have enough buyers who are looking for office space for both spouses that, if the large desk is replaced with something smaller so that room size is obvious, as recommended, it could be a plus. I know several of my clients would be delighted to have offices with their own jack and jill bath, especially when there are four other bedrooms in the house.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

I have enough buyers who are looking for office space for both spouses that, if the large desk is replaced with something smaller so that room size is obvious, as recommended, it could be a plus. I know several of my clients would be delighted to have offices with their own jack and jill bath, especially when there are four other bedrooms in the house.

I think many buyers are happy to consider homes with jack & jill style bathrooms and certainly lots of buyers can and do use more than one bedroom for an office or a craft room or reading lounge or whatever. The concern that the stager expressed, and I one I share, is that when a room has furniture (or clutter...) that dominates, it triggers a reaction that makes most buyers feel like they are NOT going to be able the use "space" for anything. Simply put buyers see the room not as "potential" but as a liability.

I have literally seen buyers stand at the doorway of rooms like the one described by the OP and not want to enter it. They will say things like "we need to have X bedrooms" even when the home has X+ bedrooms which tells me that they really are not "mentally processing" anything other than the unusualness of the space.

Funny thing too is that I have even had similar reactions when folks see a completely empty / vacant room / space in a home. I remember one time I showed a lovely home in an area with many large custom homes. The sellers were in the process of "downsizing" their not fully "emptied nest". The home had a huge basement that was finished but they had removed all the kids toys and furniture so it looked almost like an empty warehouse. Many buyers would come down the stairs(which were finished nicely), turn on the lights and see a BIG (around 1000 sq ft all told just in the finished part of the basement) "void" and instead of thinking of the possibilities of using it for a playroom or entertainment space (this was before home theaters were as mainstream...) the reaction was about a notch below panic: "What would we have to do with all this?"... When the place finally sold the buyer was someone who did fill it with the pinball machines, dart boards and other kinds of things to make a "man cave of family fun". Would have sold much quicker / better price if that was the staged purpose...

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by chet everett

I think many buyers are happy to consider homes with jack & jill style bathrooms and certainly lots of buyers can and do use more than one bedroom for an office or a craft room or reading lounge or whatever. The concern that the stager expressed, and I one I share, is that when a room has furniture (or clutter...) that dominates, it triggers a reaction that makes most buyers feel like they are NOT going to be able the use "space" for anything. Simply put buyers see the room not as "potential" but as a liability.

I have literally seen buyers stand at the doorway of rooms like the one described by the OP and not want to enter it. They will say things like "we need to have X bedrooms" even when the home has X+ bedrooms which tells me that they really are not "mentally processing" anything other than the unusualness of the space.

Funny thing too is that I have even had similar reactions when folks see a completely empty / vacant room / space in a home. I remember one time I showed a lovely home in an area with many large custom homes. The sellers were in the process of "downsizing" their not fully "emptied nest". The home had a huge basement that was finished but they had removed all the kids toys and furniture so it looked almost like an empty warehouse. Many buyers would come down the stairs(which were finished nicely), turn on the lights and see a BIG (around 1000 sq ft all told just in the finished part of the basement) "void" and instead of thinking of the possibilities of using it for a playroom or entertainment space (this was before home theaters were as mainstream...) the reaction was about a notch below panic: "What would we have to do with all this?"... When the place finally sold the buyer was someone who did fill it with the pinball machines, dart boards and other kinds of things to make a "man cave of family fun". Would have sold much quicker / better price if that was the staged purpose...

You've got a couple of things going on there. One is that I've also had people looking for that extra office space unable to picture an office in a room that was perfect for it, just because it was called a "bedroom". I try, as a buyer's agent, to educate my buyers if I know what they're looking for (and I do ) by pointing out that this room being used as an office would make a lovely bedroom - see the closet? - or the opposite, if they're looking for extra office space and all there is is that extra "bedroom" (you could put shelves in the closet and it would be perfect!). This, of course, if the house meets their needs in other ways and they're stuck because they're having a shortage of imagination that day.

If the desk is the size of a dressing table, say, and there's a twin-bed-sized sofa in the room, that might work to bridge the gap of the imagination-impaired.

[middle-aged mom]

Once upon a time I had a client who used his LR as a home office. He had this massive, enormous, hideous desk in the middle of the room. He refused to change the way he lived just because he was selling his house.

Prospective buyers had a challenging time getting over the presense of the big ole honking desk.

He seller probably took a 1-2% hit on what he would have otherwise netted on the sale in that market because I was unable to presuade him to act in his own best interests.

[CCRESI]

I would make it another bedroom. Buyers are usually pretty good about sizing up furniture. They think, hmmmm....if a bed can fit in here, so could my desk.

Good luck to you selling!!!