Real Estate Professionals, have you ever considered this thought? If you haven't, maybe you should! Let's say for example that you had two homes in a neighborhood, priced similarly, with things being roughly equal. How likely does it seem that with comperable homes the average potential buyer is likely to visit both properties? Fairly likely, wouldn't you say?
When they arrive at each of these homes, this is what they see....
Now if you were the potential buyer, which home would you likely want to purchase? Now what if home #1 was actually priced more than house #2? What message would this send to the potential buyer?
This actually is the case between these two properties. House #2 is actually larger and costs less. If buyers walked through both of these homes it would be apparent that house #2 was a real bargain. Is it any wonder that the staged home - the one that looked great and was priced well is the one that went under contract first?
Take a look at your current listings, or consider when you list your next property that if you aren't staging, someone else in your neighborhood might be. If they are, then remember that your unstaged listing just might help sell their staged one!
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First Impressions Home Staging & Interior ReDesign is a nationally award winning company owned and operated in Summerville, SC a suburb of Charleston, SC. We provide high quality staging for both occupied and vacant homes in the greater surrounding areas and beyond! For more information please visit, www.WeStageSC.com. If you are interested in learning about making Home Staging your profession, please visit, www.StagingAndRedesign.com for more information.
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Melissa Marro, a published artist, now turned staging advocate and national speaker speaks her mind about real estate and the home staging industry. In her 'no holds barred' approach, audience members find real answers to the industries pitfalls and learn how to overcome them with tried and true information and guidance. With marketing as her passion, she turned a small home based business into one of the nation's largest home staging and training facilities. She now operates as the CEO of First Impressions Home Staging & Interior ReDesign as well as an instructor for Staging And Resign and regularly speaks at the StagerList Expos and Real Estate Staging Association (RESA)'s trade events.
For more information on having Marro speak at one of your real estate functions, please contact her at 843.822.2622 or email at marro.melissa@gmail.com
If you would like Marro's team to provide information on staging a property in the state of South Carolina, or the Greater Charleston Area, please visit www.WeStageSC.com, email marro.melissa@gmail.com or call 843.822.2622.
Hi Melissa! You are right. We just took an extra two weeks to sell a property that the Owners insisted on "trying" a bit higher, and was "tired" in condition though well maintained, as opposed to a property that was priced correctly and showed "staged".
If only all Owners would listen to advice!
Great post-well put!
In any market Price and Pristine are the magical words. If a home is not professionally staged, it will lose. How much? Debatable, but definitely more than the cost. Can't afford it? Get the seller to pay for it? Seller can pay for it? Get the seller to reimburse the agent at closing. Just do it guys and gals....
Great illustration. Your photos alone should be enough to persuade a seller of the power of a staged home. No question as to which home is showing better.
This is a great way to illustrate the point! If they don't "get it" after this example, I'm not sure there is hope for them!
Great point, Melissa, and one that every Realtor AND Seller should read. Sellers also should know what their competition is as well as how it is represented & "packaged" to sell. Great photos to back it up!
You make a great point, Melissa! I've noticed that owner occupied homes often have the sofa positioned opposite the fireplace or t.v., as in the un-staged photo. Although this is how most people would actually "live" in a room like this, for staging, your furniture placement is perfect and says "welcome, come on in" instead of "roadblock, don't come into this room". Great job as always!
As usual Melissa, you paint a perfect picture of the value of staging both in your words and pictures above. I also agree with Diana, the room is SO MUCH for inviting and for most buyers it will be a subconscious thing that will draw people in!
Great point, Melissa. ITA that every realtor and seller should read, also. I recently went house shopping with my friend and was just sickened--even angered--by the condition of the only owner-occupied home we saw. It just proves how much realtors really need us.
Thanks for all the great comments everyone! I actually got this idea as I was reading through some of CSPs materials and got to thinking about it. The more I thought about it the more I decided that it really is true. So often the staging works not only because this house looks great, but because so many others don't! The other homes feeling out of sorts makes the staged house really stand out in the crowd as the valuable and valued home.....
I've been running into a lot of resistance lately in another forum I frequent. All you need, many of the posters have been writing, is a clean home that has been decluttered.
Here's another one: a staged home makes me suspicious. Who do they think they are trying to fool?
Sellers post there, requesting help for staging. Whenever I help them, I usually explain WHY they should do this or that, remove the chair because it is interfering with the entrance into the room, etc. I've gone to great lengths not only to help the individual sellers but to try to explain to the masses on that forum WHY you need to stage a home, why you need to remove scores of teenager's trophies, why you need to have a clean kitchen counter, why you need to have two or three colorful pictures above that particular sofa, why you need to dress up that particular bed, etc.
Yet, the anti-stagers persist. Just today they commented on Get It Sold and how the host or sellers mention at the end of the show that the home still hasn't sold. See, they said. If staging was so important, why have so many of those homes not sold?
You know what the seller said about removing the chair mentioned above? She'd remove the throw pillow on it. WHAT? Why did she ask for help in the first place?
I am just so sad, so frustrated.
So Melissa, first of all, thank you for letting me vent, and second of all, I could not agree with you more! The sellers who do not have their homes professionally staged are helping the other homes sell more quickly.
There are so many sellers out there and so much business-- if they're not getting it, move on to the next one who does! I still think we should do our best to get the word out but not everyone wants to hear it. There are the sellers who will do whatever it takes to get their homes sold-- and then there are the ones who won't even move a chair.
My sister and I just staged her house for sale. She just started showing it and after the first showing, we have an offer coming in. Even after that, there are people that probably won't give staging the credit. But-- when we looked at the competition, nothing else was staged. So-- all the better for us! For all the "anti-stagers," let's hear a great big "HA-HA!!!" LOL!
Melissa, I believe there is a lot to what you are saying... It's all about merchandising a home to look much better than the ones it is competing against, or as Linda would say, "Moving it up higher on the rungs of the property ladder". And if the competition has not been staged, then the staged one is certainly going to merchandise better.
Your pictures tell the whole story. Most would choose the one on the right!