When Selling Your House, Home Staging is Your Best Investment

You’ve made the decision to sell your home! You will soon realize that now is the time to prepare yourself to move into the marketing mode because you will soon be transforming your home to a house for your market…the Home Buyer.

Staging involves taking a look at your home from the lens of a prospective buyer. There is nothing wrong with your personal items you have placed in every room while you are living there, but all the personal belongings distract from the product for sale — the house itself.

The overloaded rooms of furniture, knick-knacks, family photos and clutter need to be packed away and stored. Your favorite wall colors should be painted a
neutral palette and collectibles put away and ultimately the home is
‘de-personalized.’ The chance of someone else coming in with your same exact
decorating style are very slim, so therefore showcase the house, not your
grandmother’s antique table or that special item you just purchased at the
Westfield Spring Fling.

Similar to redesign, Staging involves using what you already own. 

Simply put, having your home professionally Staged by trained experts involves
reviewing, purging and organizing. Every room, every closet, every nook and
cranny gets a "make under." Before you review and store, consider
edit and purge. Before you show your house with those purple walls, paint them
a neutral color that shows off the beauty of your home. Consider donating your
unwanted items to local charities such as The Furniture Assist or The Agape
Clothing Closet at The Presbyterian Church in Westfield.

By re-arranging various elements within each room, you will be able to have the
prospective buyer focus on the important attributes and architectural details. As example, a fireplace is a very nice feature of a home and usually the focal point of a room. Unfortunately, in today’s homes it usually competes with the new flat-screen television hanging on the wall. Many homes have so much of their family-room furniture focused on the TV that you don't even see the fireplace, which is the likely a key architectural selling feature of the space. Think about moving the TV to focus on the key selling feature: the fireplace.

The goal of Staging is to make a home appealing to the highest number of potential buyers, thereby selling a property more swiftly and for more money. Staging techniques focus on improving a property's appeal by transforming it into a welcoming, attractive product that anyone may see themselves living in. Home Staging is a growing trend, picking up speed with today's large real estate
inventory and the cost is definitely worth the investment, it certainly costs less than a price reduction.

To gain an edge in your marketplace, you must be priced right and look better than the competition! Photos of Staged homes portray the property’s assets more clearly. Over 85% of buyers research online first to see which homes will make it to their “must see” list. 

Linda Thayer and Kathy Carlson are Partners at Stage 2 Sell, a home staging business based in Westfield. For more information, including links to charity donation websites please visit the Stage 2 Sell website at www.stage2sellnj.net