Staging a Home for Sale
Maybe you were offered a job across the country, you want to move nearer to your aging parents, or you simply want to downsize or upsize. For whatever reason, you have chosen to put your home on the market.
To improve the odds of selling quickly and of getting the price you want, you may want to stage your home. Simply put, staging is redecorating and, possibly, renovating. When you stage a home, you want to decorate it to make it appealing to as many buyers as possible. To do so, you generally have to remove a lot of personal items like photographs and anything that makes the home look or feel cluttered. As you wait for a sale, you will need a place to store the portion of these removed items that you want to keep. A storage unit may be the answer. Rental schedules are generally flexible so that you can store items for a month or a year, whatever it takes to get the house sold. You now have a decision. You can either hire a professional stager or do it yourself. A professional will be able to view your home objectively without the sentimental attachment to family heirlooms or even an owner's favorite, but not necessarily popular, paint color. A good stager will know if the average stranger will see your valuables and tastes as inviting or eccentric. The stager should be up on the latest fashion trends and know if a shade of wall color is too bland or too bright. The designer you choose should be able to look at your furniture and decor and know what can stay and what should be stored or given away as they provide a plan for reorganization. Of course, this expertise and effort will cost. The range can be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on factors that include the degree of difficulty, the reputation of the stager and the size of the home. Professional stagers and realtors view this money spent as an investment because you will likely see it returned to you in the form of a solid offer, quite possibly substantially higher or sooner than without the help of a stager. Of course, don't expect a guarantee.
If you hire a professional, take these things into consideration:
Want to tackle home staging on your own? Some guidelines:
Home buyers want to see the house's potential to be their home. If it looks great due to careful staging, they are more likely to view the home as turnkey rather than as a money pit.
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