If you’re selling your home, staging it can be one of the easiest ways to sell your home more quickly and for the best price possible.
Home staging is showing the interior of the home in the best way possible. By positioning furnishings, colors, and window lighting in a certain way, you will bring out each room’s best qualities.
While buyers are encouraged to ignore the aesthetics of the interior and focus on the “bones”, most buyers aren’t able to do this and imagine the interior of the home looking different. This is why staging is so important.
Benefits of Home Staging
Make a Great First Impression
While we aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, let’s be honest, we all do it. When a buyer first comes into your home, if it’s all cluttered with old, ugly furniture, they aren’t paying attention to anything else. It becomes hard to see themselves living in the home and they keep that first impression in mind for a very long time.
Focus on Potential (Not Present)
Interior decorating is a very personal thing. Everyone has their own style and their own ideas of what looks good. Staging helps buyers envision the potential of the house instead of how you personally decorated.
Bring Out The Best of Key Areas of the Home
When it comes to selling a home, the rooms are not weighted equally in the buyer’s mind. Living Rooms, Bathrooms, Bedrooms, and Kitchens are the most important to buyers, so these are the first rooms where you want to focus your money and efforts on staging so that you can show them in the best light possible.
Increase the Home’s Value
Homes that are staged bring in more offers and have sell at higher prices. And who doesn’t want that??
Decrease Time on the Market
Because of the points mentioned above, staging decreases the time your home spends on the market. This means your home will sell faster if you stage your home properly.
DIY vs. Professional Staging
Professional staging doesn’t have to cost a lot. It can be as low as a couple hundred dollars. If you can afford it, it would be beneficial to have a professional stage your home for maximum impact.
However, if you don’t want to pay, you can stage your home yourself by doing a couple of key things:
Decluttering. Remove all clutter in the home. If you have to rent a storage unit, do it. No one will be able to see themselves living in your cluttered home.
Depersonalizing. Again, your buyers need to be able to see themselves living in your home. They cannot do this if they see your personal pictures and items all over it. Pack those away and make the house as neutral as possible.
Small Repairs. Make sure you do any repairs you can before putting your house on the market. People will make a mental list of these while looking at your home and see them as annoyances they will have to take care of and many times will choose another home that will not require as much work.
Deep Cleaning. Make sure your house is clean! Again, your potential buyers will see that as extra work they will have to do right away and they will choose a different home.
When you are selling a home, you will improve your chances of selling fast and high if you stage your home. You can hire a professional or do it yourself, but it’s a very important step in selling your home.