Email Elizabethhome staging in sacramento
How to Tell if Your Home Does Not Need Home Staging to Sell
Your home might not need home staging to sell. Do you know how you can tell? Well, for starters, you probably can’t on your own. But if you ask a top Sacramento Realtor whose specialty is solely working with sellers, I bet she can tell you. When your entire focus in Sacramento real estate is listing homes and selling them — and you don’t work with buyers — you view the world through a dedicated lens. You see things differently than other agents. At least that is the case with me.
I can tell you in a heartbeat if your home does not need home staging to sell. Some homes do not require home staging, and since part of my goal is to increase net profit for a seller, I’m not sending them down that path in every situation. Because some situations simply don’t call for home staging.
Oh, you’ll hear agents say every home shows better with home staging, and that’s not entirely true. For example, tiny, small homes don’t always show better with staging. Too much furniture can crowd a small house. It can make a small house appear even smaller. A buyer will never know she can’t fit a bed in a small bedroom if there isn’t a bed there.
Two homes that I’m presently working on listing don’t need staging and for different reasons. One home is unique, with vintage designer wallpaper. Wood windows. Wood ceiling, beams and fancy millwork. Random planked floors. Handmade braided rag floor covering, wall-to-wall. It’s a special storybook house. Staging might detract from the period and make the home seem smaller. It’s not that large to start with.
Another home features a long room at the entrance, with a delightful bonus view through French doors at the other end. That’s the selling feature. The million dollar shot. I explained to that seller that she should stage the living room / dining area, separating the two spaces. While she does not need home staging to sell, she should stage that very important first impression space. Bring into focus the original fireplace and send the view out into the back yard.
This seller was excited when she called yesterday to say she met with my preferred home stager. The stager not only promised to stage the living area, but she threw in for free the staging of a yoga studio out back. As a bonus for the seller, she said, because I refer so much business to the stager. She makes me look good, and my seller is very happy!
If you really want to know if you need home staging to sell, ask an experienced Realtor for her opinion. In our present seller’s market, it is possible your home does not need home staging to sell.
Home Staging is Back in Sacramento and Elk Grove
Another sign of our slowly recovering real estate market is home staging is making a big comeback in Sacramento, especially among Elk Grove homes. For years, we had so many short sales in the midst of a down real estate market that many sellers did not stage their homes because they didn’t have to, wasn’t needed. How do you know if a home needs to be staged? Because some homes don’t.
First and foremost is how hard will it be to sell that home? Are there other factors about the home that could discourage a buyer from making an offer such as bad condition, horrible location, unreasonable price? It is a home that most buyers don’t want to buy? I also look at the competition. What else will a buyer see when they tour other homes nearby in this same price range. If other homes are staged, yours better be, too.
It’s not really the buyer’s fault that a buyer can’t visualize potential or, more important, feel the emotional tug of a home. Door opens, they walk inside, they immediately know whether they like the home in 3 seconds. The rest of the tour reinforces that original perception. It gets better or it gets worse depending on their first emotion.
Buyers try to “rule out” buying homes just as much as they “rule in” buying homes. Some believe in fate, whether or not you may agree with that premise, a perception of fate might be the buyer’s reality and you go with the flow. Curb appeal hits them first and the interiors second. Third they tend to look for the amenities they have told their agent they want, but they’re not nearly as analytical as sellers might expect. Staging a home helps to overcome barriers.
This is why it’s generally a good idea to make that home as attractive as possible and set the stage to encourage an offer. Just sold today another home in Elk Grove that was on the market for almost 3 weeks without staging at an attractive price point. After home staging, whammo. Two offers. It works like this all of the time. This is not an isolated situation. You’ve gotta remove all of the objections, and one way to do that is to stage the home.
