As a homeowner, when you decide it’s time to sell your home, there are many decisions you have to make to ensure you sell at the right price. One of those decisions is whether to advertise the home empty or with its furnishings. If you have already moved into a new home, you may be tempted to leave the house empty.
But if you still live in it, the easier option would be to advertise the home with all of your personal belongings. But will either of these options help you get the highest price for your home?
How you present your home is a big factor in how much you get for it. It is a known fact that empty houses do not perform well in the market. They don’t resonate well with buyers. And they often sell below value, warns McGuire Management in Denver, after spending a long time on the shelf. Selling your home empty is not an option you should be considering.
But does that mean you should market the home with your furniture intact? The answer is no. How you design your home reflects your taste and lifestyle. That works as long as you live in the property, but not when you are trying to sell it.
Presenting a home according to the owner’s style limits it because not everyone is going to love that style. Only people who share the same preferences will be attracted to it. You do not want this for your home. Instead, you want to be able to reach even people who have contrasting ideas to your own.
And the best way to do this is by using furniture, lighting, and décor that many people can relate to. It also means arranging these items in such a way that the home evokes a strong emotional response from buyers. How do you achieve this? By having the home staged professionally.
What is home staging?
Home staging is a real estate marketing strategy that uses makeovers as its primary tool. Its goal is to take an ordinary home and transform it into a space that resonates with potential buyer’s dreams. Staging a home makes it feel warm, welcoming, and move-in ready. It helps buyers connect to it emotionally and see it as a place where they could live.
By using colors, lighting, furniture, and décor creatively, professional stagers highlight the best things about a property. They also arrange the space to fit the current design trends that homebuyers are looking for.
But is home staging not just an additional cost and pressure to the existing costs and pressures of selling your home? On both counts, the answer is no:
- Staging your home is not an additional expense because while it costs hundreds of dollars to stage your home, it can earn you thousands of dollars.
- Staging your home relives the stress of selling your home because it reduces the time the property stays on the market.
- Furthermore, home staging is the best way to take full advantage of how homes are marketed and sold today.
The benefits of staging your home for sale
Staging creates an emotional appeal
Selling anything successfully begins with creating the right perceptions in people’s minds. When people buy something, 80% of that buying decision is emotional. Only 20% is logical and people usually use logic to try and justify an emotional decision they already made. Home staging helps to create the best impression about your home; buyers see the property not just as a house but as their dream home.
Visualize the end product
When it is empty most people cannot visualize what the house would look like when furnished. They also have trouble imagining how to put a home’s configuration to the best use. But when the right furniture and furnishing are used in it, people start to see the advantages of a home’s unique features. Staging a home professionally helps buyers see the potential of a home and how they can employ its spaces.
Staging a home hides its flaws
Every home has at least one aspect of it that could be better. It may be too small, awkwardly shaped, have corners that are not clear to define and may not be airy or bright enough. Before staging a home, professional stagers take note of its flaws. And they design the home in a way that hides those flaws or turns them into advantages. When potential buyers view that home, they are more likely to focus on its strengths rather than its weaknesses.
Staged homes sell faster and for more
A staged home looks better in pictures and is more sharable on the internet. The more people view the home, the more offers the owner gets, and the greater the chances of it being sold. This is why staged homes sell faster. But in addition to selling faster, they also sell at a higher price than comparative homes which have not been staged. This happens because the staged home fits the dreams and expectations of the buyer; so there is a perception of greater value. This feeling leads the buyer to make a higher offer for the property.