Sacramento Real Estate Staging Blog: May 2009

Home Staging is the very best proven way to get top dollar for your home as you prepare it for sale. Having your home staged by a Professional Home Stager will aid in selling it faster and for more money! Staging sets the scene throughout the house to create immediate buyer interest in your property. This leads to your home selling for the highest possible price in today's market. Remember, "The way you live in your home, and the way you market and sell your home are two different things."  It is very difficult for a homeowner to look at their home objectively, and if you can't look at something objectively then you cannot market it effectively.  When you decide to sell your car you will more than likely get it detailed and keep it clean in order to get the best price.  When you go on an interview for a new job, hopefully you take a shower and dress up.  You put your best foot forward.  You must do the same thing to your house.  Not only keep it clean but have it staged.  You've got one shot to make a great first impression.

Home staging isn't as expensive as you might think!  First of all, forget what you have seen about home staging on HGTV.  The television shows that depict home staging often have very little to do with the real world practice of preparing your home for sale.  Staging your home is much less expensive than having to lower your asking price by 20% to 40%.

   The first step to take is to make an impartial assessment of your home...

•·         Is it furnished?

•·         Does it look dated?

•·         Is it cluttered?

•·         Is it dirty?

•·         Does it have curb appeal?

•·         What does my back yard look like? What does my garage look like?  My Closets, YIKES!

Most professional home stagers In the Northern California area, will typically offer to do a consultation that should cost between $100 and $500, depending on the size of the home. They will come to your home, spend about an hour with you, and prepare a document that will guide you, room by room, through what you need to do to prepare your home for sale. Along with the consultation document, they will also give you a proposal of what it will cost for them (rather than you, the homeowner) to do the work.

If your budget does not allow a full staging, a professional home stager should work with what you can afford. Instead of doing the staging for you, they will act as a consultant to your project and will visit you several times in order to guide you through the staging. This will substantially reducing the staging fee.

On average, a complete full home staging for an occupied house should cost between $500 to $5,000, again depending on the size of the home and the full extent of what needs to be done.

If the house is unoccupied (whether it is new construction or simply vacant), the cost of the professional staging can be a little more costly, but remember a vacant home will not sell as fast and usually doesn't sell for top dollar.  If you have ever looked at a model home fully furnished and then went into the same model home unfurnished you understand completely why. You tend to spend less time in the un-staged home and tend to look for and see its faults.  90% of home buyers cannot envision scale and furniture placement.  A Professional Home Stager can help tremendously in this area.  Often, professional stagers are willing to do as much or as little of your home staging as you want.  Most professional home stagers in our area have their own inventory of home furnishings, or they outsource to high-end furniture rental companies.

When staging the home you will always want to invest in the main living areas:  Kitchen, Living room(s), dining room(s) and Master bedroom and bath.  These are the rooms that potential buyers will spend the most time in and critique the most.  Don't forget the front and back yard.  These area's can often be forgotten.   A  potential buyer will drive right by your house if they don't like the what they see / curb appeal.

Emotion makes the biggest impact on a buyer!  When we stage a home, we are creating an emotion that appeals to a broad group of people.  You will want to consider who your target market is?  Whether it is a car, clothes or a house; we make purchases with emotion, we fall in love with it, we've got to have it, we imagine a better life by having it.  Outdated furniture, the incorrect placement of furniture & décor, outdated décor & personal items such as family photos, shampoo bottles in the shower, toothbrushes on the bathroom counter and especially dirty laundry laying around completely detracts from that positive emotion.  We are not only selling a house, we are selling an emotion.  You want a buyer to walk in the door and feel that they could live like this if they bought this house.  The goal is multiple full price + offers in the first week.  I have seen it happen time and time again.  However, typically the home stager receives the "help me" phone call after the home has been on the market for months and isn't generating much excitement.

Every room including the back yard, front yard, closets, garages & pantry's must be staged right and look their best!!  Potential buyers look at every room and everything.  Would you buy a house if someone told you can't look in the closets or go into the garage?

When finding a professional home stager in your area, you will want to look at their past work, ask to see their portfolio or check out their websites.  You want to make sure that your professional home stage is a full time stager and is available to you.  Ask if they are a certified home stager.  Also, consult with your realtor, some have stagers as part of their team or know of a stager that they have used in the past.  Your Realtor & Stager should be able to work together positively and flawlessly in order to get the house sold.  Don't make your decision completely on price, remember you get what you pay for.  A professional home stager should be able to work within your budget and give you the very best fair price.  After all, on average every $100 you spend on staging your home you get $349 return on investment. - 2007 National Association of Realtors.  Like any other service you should like the stager and be comfortable working with them.  You are not only buying their service, but you are buying their expertise and personality.

As a professional home stager I believe these items to be the most important:

1.  At least consult with a stager, it is very difficult to look at the home you've lived in objectively.  Your taste, as fabulous as they are, may not be the taste of potential buyers.  And you won't be able to market it effectively.

2.  Ensure that your stager & realtor have at least 20 great photos of the house and that the property is going to be marketed to its fullest potential.  80% of potential buyers will put together their "tour of homes" by looking at pictures on the internet first.  The more the better.  For example if there isn't a photo of the kitchen the buyer may think something is wrong with it.  Curb appeal, that same 80% of potential buyers will then drive your neighborhood, if they don' like the way it looks from the outside, they will keep on driving.  These are two important hurdles you must overcome just to get the buyer in the door.

3.   Once you have the buyer in the door, the house needs to be 100% perfectly staged, at least the main living areas.  It needs to be clean and spotless.  I always tell my clients, "Nobody in their right mind lives like this, but you have to if you are serious about selling this house fast and for top dollar."  Start packing now, it helps to eliminate the clutter and the unnecessary items.

4.  You need to be able to leave your home within 15 to 20 minutes if a Realtor calls and wants to show the property.  Make a list of quick "to do's" and have it handy for when you get that call.  You have to be accommodating as difficult and as irritating as it can be, you are trying to sell the house. 

5.  Once the house is ready for the market, have open houses.  Ask your stager to participate they may even be willing to share in the cost with the Realtor.  Do an open house just for realtors.  Make the open house fun and  exciting, be different, have a BBQ, make it a party.  Your Realtor & Stager should be able to help you.