Setting The Stage

May 29, 2019

The vast majority of home buyers start their search online.  Newspapers, flyers, door hangers are a thing of the past.  Buyers want to sit with their mobile device on a Monday night at 9 pm (the most likely time, by the way) and scroll through one house after another. HGTV forever changed the way people look at houses.  They turn the falling-apart and beyond-all-hope into something so beautiful you wish HGTV would knock on your door, tell you to book into a hotel for a month, and surprise you with a new reason to live. Often the biggest appeal of a home comes when it is staged. You’ll know a staged home – Stacked colourful books, green apples in bowls, pillows and throws everywhere; three lime green round ornaments; rugs, fresh flowers and fake plants, olive oil and Himalayan Salt shaker, and wine bottles. It’s magical. Once finished with the inside, the team of staging experts go outside and transform the curb and its appeal into an experience only found in the enchanted garden .

Most buyers will look at a listing and the first thing they will do is click through the photos.  If the REALTOR® has done their job, the photos have been professionally done (no toilet seats up, my pet peeve). A virtual tour should always be part of the listing.  The key is making sure the buyer doesn’t see it all from their recliner, there should be an element of wanting to see the property in person. If they see it all, they’ll pick at things they don’t like before even setting foot in the home, if they decide to do even that. If the home is vacant then photos of blank walls, the countertop, the laminate doesn’t really say, I really need to see amazing building materials in that $450,000 box. I’ve worked with staging companies, and they do an excellent job of helping the buyer to imagine how they could live in the space.  The drawback is the cost.  The last house I was involved in with staging was done by an excellent professional staging company. They charged a fee to set up, and then a monthly fee thereafter.  This amounted to well over $5000 during the for sale period (a cost to ponder upon should the home not sell).  Some statistics show that homes sell quicker when they are staged.  Let’s face it, we all want pretty things to look at and we’d prefer to buy pretty. . A new trend is virtual staging (VS).  I really like this, especially with a vacant property.   It’s cheaper than physically staging a home.   I’ve seen prices ranging  from $30-$75 an image, so if there are 20 images to virtually stage, do the math, it’s still expensive.  Recently, I listed a vacant property in East Village, and the VS was amazing.   The $450,000 box came alive, and the professional photos show it.  It looked less sadly alone and more vibrantly executive.

Just one more thing to add, and not because my husband is a painter, okay maybe partly because of that..a fresh coat of paint in any home has one of the best returns on investment (ROI).  It’s not a guarantee but it potentially could increase the value of a home. It’s better to get that paint brush out than to leave odd wall colors or beat up trim for the buyer to complain about, and most likely they will. All the staging in the world will not help a weathered house look better. Just a few cans of paint and you can easily freshen up a house.

To those that are selling their home, set the stage for success and remember “the first impression is the only impression.” (HGTV told me that).