Home Staging can Make or Break a Sale

When selling a house, it is essential to help prospective buyers clearly see all the great things the property has to offer and easily visualize themselves living inside the home. While some investors prefer to show a “blank slate”—a home that’s clean and freshly painted, but empty — there can be real value in home staging.

Homebuyers are making a serious purchase, and they tend to think in critical terms. They may balk at hideous wallpaper or odd paint, have trouble seeing a home’s potential, or have difficulty defining different spaces or visualizing where furniture might go. Staging helps showcase a home’s best features, gets potential buyers’ imaginations going, and helps them see how they – or their buyers – could make great use of each space.

So how to stage a property?

If you have decent eye for design, a good imagination, access to rental furniture, and don’t mind doing a little scrubbing or slinging a little paint, you can likely stage a property yourself. Sometimes, if a property already has decent furniture and good bones, all that needs to be done is a little cleaning, a little de-cluttering, and some dressing up. However, if you’re dealing with an empty house, you may want to check into available tutorials, books, and online staging resources.

If you’re short on time, or if worrying about throw rugs or paint colors isn’t your thing, you may want to consider hiring someone to stage your property for you. Professional stagers have design know-how, and an inventory of furniture to choose from. They know how to maximize the potential of a space and minimize its flaws.

Stagers also know that staging isn’t just about making a house look appealing, but helping it sell. Funnily enough, these goals don’t always line up together.

When staging a home, “neutral” rules the day. The highest number of people possible have to be able to see themselves living in the home. They have to imagine their own furniture in the space, and their own artwork on the walls. They can’t do that effectively if the decor looks too much like someone else’s very specific tastes.

Professional stagers know how to make a home look neutral enough to appeal to buyers, while still having a great visual appeal and a homey, comfortable feel. They make sure the furniture is the right scale so that a room doesn’t seem smaller than it is. They use neutral colors and choose items that have clean lines, but still look cozy and inviting. They also tailor the home’s look to the local market, and the type of client who will be likely be interested, without completely excluding any other types of buyers.

Staging can be a tall order, when all’s said and done, which can making hiring a professional a wise investment. After all, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and a good impression can mean the difference between an immediate sale and another carried-over mortgage payment.