Importance of Home Staging
Having grown up in a real estate family, I've been inside more homes than I would ever want to try to count. And the importance of how a home presents itself both on the inside & outside cannot be overstated.
Presentation is Everything!
In challenging times, when the market doesn't favor the seller, little details of a home can make or break whether or not that home makes the buyer's list of favorites and ultimately whether or not it is purchased at full price, near full price, or even purchased at all.This concept is sometimes difficult for Sellers to fully understand because of their close attachment to their home. It is hard to see flaws & quirks and to understand and be able to see how it is that Buyers will view their house. Having been inside thousands of homes in the Houston area with my Buyers, along with being an Accredited Home Staging Specialist, I have a keen eye for knowing what it going to attract and detract from the home's overall aesthetic appeal from a Buyer's standpoint. It doesn't matter if it looks fine to you -- the home Seller, or if the neighbors and your friends think everything looks good -- a home has to look attractive for a wide range of people and stylistic tastes.
Elizabeth Weintraub says it best:
"Home staging is about illusions. It's how David Copperfield would sell a house. It's beyond decorating and cleaning. It's about perfecting the art of creating moods. Staging makes your house look bigger, brighter, cleaner, warmer, more loving and, best of all, it makes home buyers want to buy it.
Contrary to what you might think, it's about more than preparing the house for sale. Staging is what you do after you've cleaned, decluttered, painted, made minor repairs; it's all about dressing the home for sale.
It's about adding the small details: the lipstick, mascara and, for simplicity, a stunning, single strand of Tahitian pearls.
Professional Home Stagers are highly skilled artists. They can take a blank canvas and paint a sensuous portrait without ever lifting a paint brush. Stagers possess the skills of a top-level designer and they create dramatic scenery that appeals to all five senses."
Staging has recently gained notoriety on HGTV home improvement shows and often times is shown as having a huge price tag associated with them. Keith Rockwall of the Christian Science Monitor says it best,
"Many people are under the misconception that Staging is a pricey option for rich home owners. Not true. Staging is about the creativity, not the money. What people don't realize when they sell their house "as is" or don't stage is that it can actually cost them money. Sellers should not look at Staging by seeing how much it will cost but how much it could make."
One advice to my sellers is that the investment (if any) in staging your home will ALWAYS be less than having your home get a price reduction!
