Home staging is the proven way to get your house sold quickly and for top dollar. Even so, some home sellers aren’t staging their homes before listing them for sale. Why? Here are some misconceptions about home staging…and the FACTS about home staging!
Misconception #1: “Home staging costs too much money.”
The TRUTH: The nationwide average price for staging an empty home is 2-3 percent of the list price of the home. Yet, homes that are staged sell up to SEVEN TIMES faster than unstaged homes and make up to 10% more in purchase price than similar-sized homes that aren’t staged!
An on-site home staging consultation –referred to as a “walk and talk”– is generally the least expensive staging service and is a very cost-effective way to learn how to prepare your house for sale. In this type of service, a home staging expert will visit your property, spend time in every room and around the outside of the property, and then give you immediate feedback on what you should do before listing your house. You will walk inside and around the property with your stager and take notes about what to do. Then, you will decide if you want the home stager to provide more assistance. The consultation is less expensive than other services because it only requires up to two hours of the stager’s time. If you want additional services—for example, help with decluttering/packing, or rearranging furniture, or bringing in outside rental furniture—your stager will explain those options and the prices, and you will decide what else, if anything, you’d like your stager to do with or for you.
Misconception #2: “I have to store all my furniture off-site and rent nicer furniture.”
The TRUTH: An accredited home stager, who has been trained in the science of home staging, is skilled in “repurposing” your belongings to show off your house to its best advantage. That means we can see what furniture and décor items you already have and use them to stage your spaces. In most cases, home sellers already have everything you need. It’s simply a matter of putting furniture and décor in the right places and packing away personal and nonessential items you have on display.
Misconception #3: “I’ve already decorated my house. I don’t need to stage it.”
The TRUTH: Home staging is NOT decorating! When you decorated your house, you lovingly made it a home that reflects your family’s personality and preferences. Home staging is a science in which we turn your beautifully decorated HOME back into a HOUSE! We know how to “depersonalize” a house so that prospective buyers can imagine themselves living in your house instead of feeling like they’re tiptoeing through someone else’s home.
Misconception #4: “My house smells clean and ready for showing.”
The TRUTH: You live in your house every day, and so you likely aren’t able to smell and see what an impartial, expert home stager will. The “smell” of a house is influenced by many things: how you cook, whether you smoke or have pets, how frequently and recently you have cleaned carpets and upholstered furniture, whether you have moisture issues in your basement or plumbing issues, and more. We stagers are new to your house. We haven’t gotten accustomed to the smells of your spaces as you have, and we’ll detect them right away and know how to get rid of smells.
Misconception #5: “I’ve cleaned my house. We’re ready to show it!”
The TRUTH: Home stagers are experts in knowing how clean a property should be and what prospective buyers will notice. Some of the cleanliness issues we see every day are ones you’ve learned to overlook. We can tell you (kindly…we promise!) where extra elbow grease is needed, and what types of products you can use so that your house doesn’t smell of cleaning products.
Misconception #6: “I don’t need a stager to advise me. I’m going to list the house without staging it. If it doesn’t sell in a month, THEN we will stage it.”
The TRUTH: The clock starts ticking on your house from the first day it’s listed on the Multi Listing Service or MLS. More than 75 percent of prospective buyers who view your house—online or in person—visit in the first two weeks after you’ve listed your home publicly, and more than 85 percent of visits to sale houses come from house shoppers who’ve looked at MLS photos on Realtor.com, Trulia.com, Zillow.com, and other public web sites. This means that by the end of your first month of listing your unstaged house, your property begins to become what’s called “stale.”
And what happens once your house becomes stale? You end up reducing the price, usually by at least 5 percent of the purchase price. So, what’s less expensive for you…paying to stage your house so that it’s gorgeous and eye-catching from the beginning, or reducing the price of your house after those critical first 30 days? The answer is pretty clear! StagingCraft has all of our senses locked and loaded to get your house ready for sale and to sell FAST. Let us put our expertise to work for you!