Home Staging Differs Versus Decorating
While a well-decorated home has aesthetic appeal and interest, the idea of staging is a bit different. Instead of being as reflection of your tastes and experiences, it needs to resonate with a wide audience and have universal appeal. As one realtor explains, when you stage your home it is no longer a place to live but a product to market to your target audience. This means that you need to let go of any ego and personal preferences and be able to show the home to its full potential. This may mean storing some of your furniture, knick knacks and photos away until you move. Toys, pet accessories and even extra utensils and kitchen items often are best out of sight, as well.
If you aren’t quite sold on this premise of streamlining your possessions, some experts advise going to look at your staged competition and seeing how well they present to prospective buyers. This may help you to visualize how your home could look with some extra effort.
Clean, Clean And Clean Again
In addition to downsizing your possessions and perhaps upgrading some of your key pieces (such as a well placed armoire, nice bedspread and new towels for the best presentation), staging is also about making your house shine down to every last corner. This means that you will need to clean everything you can see, and many parts you can’t even see, such as between grout lines, in the recesses of your cabinets and in the dark corners of your closet. When viewing a potential new home, buyers will look at everything and the cleaner your home is, the better it will look to them. Just realize that you will need to be prepared to do daily maintenance once your home is staged in order to keep up the fresh façade. (Or, you may want to invest in the help of a regular cleaner until your home sells.)
Homes At All Price Levels Benefit
You may think it is only homes in either very low, or very high, price ranges that benefit from the expert eye of a staging professional. In reality, home in all categories will find advantages to undergoing such a strategic facelift.
If you are selling a small, starter homes in the lower price range, you may have lots of competition and may need to convince buyers that every inch of your space is used to the ultimate advantage. On the flip side, if you have a very high-end home, you will want to make sure you can convince buyers that your home is worthy of its hefty price tag. A very modern kitchen with stainless steel appliance and luxury furniture and fixtures will help to reinforce that image.
What To Look For
If you want to hire a staging professional, one of the best places to start is by asking your real estate agent for a recommendation. You can also find your own stager in the newspaper, Yellow Pages, home real estate booklets, through Craigslist.org or by doing an Internet search for home stagers in your area. When you find someone you are interested in, always ask what experience the person brings and how he or she works and the fees you can expect. Also keep in mind that the education and certification a home stager brings to your job is much less important than their ability to effectively position your home for your target audience. Therefore, when you find someone you like, ask for several references and find out what former clients have to say about his or her services. Many realtors recommend hiring a self-taught home stager with a long track record over one who has taken many classes in the field but hasn’t yet had much success.
