BY RON BARLAY
In today’s highly competitive housing market, home staging has become an important tool in helping to sell homes and condominiums effectively. Sam McDadi Real Estate provides a complimentary home staging consultation to our clients. It focuses on improving your property and transforming it into an attractive product for sale. Even beautifully decorated homes need to be turned into merchandised products that enhance the home’s best features. The goal of staging is to sell your home quickly and for the highest return, by appealing to a greater number of prospective buyers.
Preparing to Sell
Selling your biggest investment can be a very rewarding experience. When your home is properly prepared, you will have a big advantage over your competition, in terms of time on the market (less disruption to family life) and selling price (more money in your pocket).
In today’s market, most buyers are looking for a bright, spotlessly clean, sunny home that they can move right into. Just do your best to follow the plan set out by our stager and you will be leaps and bounds ahead of the pack. A home in good repair will win the bid over the competition every time. Homeowners who take the suggestions to heart and dig in, are the ones who reap the greatest rewards.
Staging Benefits
You only have one chance to impress potential buyers. Buyers’ first impressions are formed as soon as they step inside your home. Staging highlights the full potential of your property by incorporating design techniques to create a lasting first impression. You want to give homeowners a reason to buy your home.
Staging prepares your home to attract the widest market, while making it appealing to the greatest number of prospective buyers. Staging creates excitement and interest from the beginning, and sets your home apart from the competition. Properties that have been staged will have a distinct marketing advantage over non-staged homes. Staging your home can maximize the selling price and minimize the number of days on the market. Staged homes provide beautiful photos. Consumers are savvy and most of them start their search on the Internet. Photos give them their first impression.
Your stager provides an objective third party perception and will convey to homeowners tactfully and respectfully all the important issues that need to be addressed in order to prepare your property for sale
How the Initial Staging Consultation Works
A member of our staging team will call and book an appointment at a time that is convenient for you. The staging consultation generally takes 1.5-2 hours. For best results, it is preferable to do your staging consultation during daylight hours because good visibility is important for spotting all potential concerns.
Upon arrival, your stager will ask you to turn on all of the lights in your home. They will suggest you gather up a pen and notepad while they do an initial walk-through of the whole home by themselves. It is important for your stager to view the home alone initially, with no distractions. This will be their first impression in which the most helpful observations will be revealed. They will be looking for factors such as small repairs, condition of windows, caulking, tile, grout, paint, baseboards and lighting, to name a few. Also, they will be considering more flattering ways to set up the rooms and what items to edit and declutter.
Next, you and your stager will walk through the whole home together where the will reveal their observations and recommendations of what to remove, clean and repair. Your stager may suggest rearranging a room on the spot, when physically possible. This is ideal because it gets the ball rolling and demonstrates the value of changing the layout. The notes you write at this time will be handy for remembering the suggestions to be completed after your stager leaves.
At the end of your appointment, your stager will ask if you have any further questions that were not addressed during the walk-through. If you think of something after they leave, don’t worry; they will be available by telephone, text or email.
Ultimately, we have never had a client say that the preparation was not worthwhile. On the contrary, aside from getting maximum value for their home because it showed better, it also made packing for their move easier.
