When should you start home staging?

The process of staging a home should begin before the realtor is brought in. Too often home sellers wait until the last minute to seek advice about staging a home.

Show-ability = Profitability

You live in your home, but you are selling a house. The first step is to remove the personality of the current owner so that potential buyers do not feel they are just “visiting” someone’s house, but that they are looking at their new “Home”.

Before Home Staging

After Home Staging

Consider the following when staging a home

Home Staging is marketing in the same way that retailers use displays to showcase their products, gain attention and make them appealing to a larger market.

You are marketing your home to the realtor first. There is a perceived value to consider in addition to the comparable pricing in the area.

If the realtor feels the home will be a hard sell, they may suggest listing at a lower price. Why let that happen, when so much of home sale preparation can be done for no or very little money?

A little time invested can add a lot to the selling cost. How much do cleaning products cost? How inexpensive are boxes to start the packing, sorting and donating? You won’t feel that you’re under the gun if you start the process as soon as you decide to move.

Eliminate some of the stress by putting together a plan. Then call in the advice of a professional interior designer to help you further “market” your home by:

Staging the furnishings to create great traffic flow, and highlighting the best parts of the house.

After

Before

A Home Staging Professional is the expert in this part of the plan. Many times it begins with an assessment of what a buyer is looking for, eliminating all the negatives that may potentially keep them from putting an offer on your home.

A professionals assessment should begin with the street view of the house or curb appeal as it’s referred to in the industry. It will not matter how much you work on the inside if the buyer is turned off when they pull up in front of your home. If the buyer doesn’t like what they’re driving up to then what’s behind the front door won’t matter at all!

You and your team need to ready your home for some great photos. Take a look at some of the listing on the MLS or the newspaper. There is nothing worse or more detrimental to the sale of a property than BAD photos. 80% of buyers look on the internet before even calling a realtor to show them the property. What is your property saying? “A photo is worth a thousand words” or thousands of dollars could not be truer in this situation.

So when getting ready to sell a home, remember you are first marketing and showcasing your property to the realtor, and then making it easy for them to market it to potential buyers.
Make sure your house is photo ready and has great show-ability by calling in the professionals early.

If you are in Orange County, California and need help with staging, contact us and we’ll help you get top dollar for your home!

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