As we get ready to put our house on the market, our realtor advises us to "stage" the house if possible.
Here is a nice definition of staging a house.
Home staging (British English: House doctoring) is the act of preparing a private residence prior to going up for sale in the real estate marketplace. The goal of staging is to sell a home quickly, and for the most money possible by attracting the most amount of potential buyers. Staging focuses on improving a property to make it appeal to the largest amount of buyers by transforming it into a welcoming, appealing, and attractive product for sale. Staging often raises the value of a property by way of reducing the home's flaws, depersonalizing, decluttering, cleaning, improving condition items, and landscaping. For vacant homes, rental furniture is used to create a living space the buyer could "see" themselves in. Properly executed staging leads the eye to attractive features while minimizing flaws.
In reality, staging is the process of making a home look like that guy from 'Sleeping with the Enemy' lives there. Why this makes a house more appealing, I cannot say. Do potential buyers see an unfurnished house and find it unbelievable that furniture could go there? Or do they perhaps wallow in confusion over what the purpose of a room is?
Potential Buyer: Honey I just don't know about this house.
Buyer wife: I agree. Our couch would never fit in this room with the sinks and the toilet. How could we possibly live here?
I think the only argument that holds water is if someone is that OCD about every little thing, they must have taken excellent care of the house. The interesting line to walk is leaving enough stuff that it actually looks like someone is living there. Well, regardless, its a tough market and if having a few pieces of furniture around help sell it, great. Jamey and I can live with a bed and a couch for awhile. We will be moving Ruby's furniture. I haven't decided what to do with that room yet that would be believable and wouldn't require me purchasing anything.
Potential Buyer: Look at this room! Let's get this house.
Buyer wife: I agree. I've always wanted my very own Tupperware Display room!
4 comments:
Oddly enough, considering Bill's OCD nature, the house we purchased was probably the least staged one we looked at. Unless "my daughter is really sick and we have an appointment at Vanderbilt, the house is a little messy" was part of the staging. Of course, the clutter did manage to distract us from just how disgusting the kitchen floor was so I guess it worked.
I'm one of those people that seems to like houses better when they have furniture in them, apparently. I noticed when we were looking for our place that the still furnished houses appealed to me more. Rooms seem more spacious to me when there's furniture.
I'm not quite as concerned with all the properly folded towels in the closet though. Our house was very attractively decorated by the folks who lived there when we bought it, but they had two kids under 5, so it definitely wasn't immaculately clean.
Yes, but doesn't the closet look so spacious and like our house has plenty of storage? (therefore hiding the fact that our house has almost no storage)
Our house was staged to hell and back to look like a dream home for a young couple. (Frat-boy-owner's mom was the Realtor.) But they didn't even bother trying to improve the exterior/yard, which was 99% of my beef with it. And they left the back door with a hole kicked in the bottom for the dog. Weird.
Hey, it worked.
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