Staging a home is when a seller hires a company to come into a vacant property and place furniture and amenities appropriately so as to highlight the features of the house. These companies will stage part or all of the house for you, even to the extent that they will add towels and shower curtains! Sometimes staging can make a huge difference, especially if any rooms in the house are an awkward shape, or appear smaller than they actually are.
Statistics from the National Association of Realtors say that staged homes sell, on average, 88% faster and for 20% than non-staged homes. The cost of staging is typically $1.00 per square foot of the house or room, with national averages running around $400. Be aware that in Humboldt, local staging companies sometimes have long wait lists as well.
If you are planning on living in the house while you sell it, or aren’t interested in hiring someone to stage for you, there are many aspects to how staging works that can help you in preparing your home for sale.
For example, sellers can hire a professional interior designer/decorator for consultation to help with rearranging existing furnishings to make the house as appealing to buyers as possible. Sometimes just having a few friends or family over and asking them how they would rearrange or decorate can give you a lot of ideas for how to improve the visual appearance of your home – fresh eyes are the key!
You can definitely use your own belongings to stage your home yourself! It might mean that your “staged” home isn’t as comfortable to live in during the selling process, but it can drastically help get it sold. Simple tips, such as focusing on good lighting, neutral colors, and little details will make a difference.
The view from the entry, and the entry itself may be the most important area of the home to declutter, clean and stage. According to the “Psychology of House Hunting Report by BMO Financial Group, 80% of potential buyers know if a home is right for them within seconds of going inside!
Self-staging isn’t limited to the interior. You can give the porch a facelift, by adding a pot of flowers and a new welcome mat or refreshing garden beds with some annual color plants. Don’t forget the garage, either! It helps to remove excess possessions so that buyers can see the shelving as well as making the space appear bigger!
Another simple, inexpensive tip is to take a note from professional stagers, and buy some new things (that you can take with you!) like Shower Curtains, Towels, Kitchen Towels and Sponges, or even houseplants.
You might wonder if it’s worth the effort? Not only do national statistics show that staging works, but locally, it’s amazing to see the difference in buyer’s reactions when walking into a properly staged home. Sometimes it’s actually hard to reel them in to force them to look at the actual stick-built structure as they’re swooning at the “feel” of the place and “falling in love” with the house!
Your property should look and feel more like a vacation rental than an actual family home to accomplish this effect. Getting to this point is more about moving yourself OUT, than moving other things IN, and during our 2 hours of organizational help, please feel free to ask for specific staging tips to get your home ready to sell!
