What is staging?
Staging has been proven to be an amazing marketing tool. Basically, it’s preparing a home for sale to appeal to the most buyers in order to get the best price for a house with the minimum amount of time possible.
Home staging often gets confused with interior design, but they are very different. When you design and decorate your house, whether it is professionally-done or not, you are personalizing it with things that you like. For example: Paint colors, wallpapers, a specific style of furniture, kitchen cabinets, rugs, etc. And that is fine, because it is your house.
But, when you want to sell your house, even though many buyers might like your style, it is still a very specific style that will only attract specific buyers that happen to share your tastes. Staging is de–personalizing your home to appeal to what most buyers like. Give it a neutral look so that they are able to visualize themselves living there.
To be able to make this possible, it is important that you as a seller detach yourself from the property. Once you decide to sell your house, you are planning to leave it. The house is no longer your home. It is just another house in the neighborhood, more than likely competing with other similar houses for sale in the same area.
Detaching yourself emotionally from your house can be tough. Sometimes sellers see a simplified, generically staged room and they say, “But it’s so bland and plain!” However, plain and de-personalized is exactly what you need for mass appeal.
Staging is an exercise in psychology: If buyers are looking at a cluttered living room with tons of family photos hanging on the wall, they will feel that they are standing in someone else’s living room, rather than imagining themselves living in the house, hanging their own family pictures on the wall, or putting their own favorite armchair in the corner. Plus, it’s very distracting. From personal experience, every time there are family photos on a wall, the buyers always spend time looking at the photos instead of the house!
So when you’re ready to sell, get to cleaning, de-cluttering, simplifying, and de-personalizing your home! For even better results, consult with an Accredited Staging Professional and you’ll be surprised how soon you’ll get it sold!
Feel free to reach out with any questions. As a Realtor who is also an Accredited Staging Professional, I’m happy to give advice to help market your home in any way that I can.
