Did you know that the average first price reduction on a listed home can be $10K? Why take that financial hit? Stage your home for sale, and maximize your home’s value.

Staging is the first thing a worried seller should do to ensure a home doesn’t sit on the market too long. Both owner-occupied and vacant homes average half of the DOM (days on market) after being staged. Here is a recent email conversation between myself and one of my realtors:

Him: I don’t think they have the money for staging.

Me: They all don’t have the funds for staging, but they’ve had the funds to let the property sit dormant, vacant and unlisted while they wait for the right time to sell, all season???
I’ve talked to her about what her carrying costs are on this property, and she could have had a full staging job and sold for full price by now. It’s all a Return on Investment (ROI) equation.

Him: Good points!

You don’t want your Realtor staging your home. Why? Because your Realtor is really good at marketing your home. Realtors don’t want to spend 1-5 days staging your home in the way a home stager would, so they won’t do a complete job, moving furniture, getting down on hands and knees to repair, shine, organize and re-imagine the space for a large market. Does that sound like a big job to you? It is! If a realtor does spend that amount of time on your home and all their other homes they are contracted on, guess what? They aren’t doing the things you really need to be doing, which is marketing the home to get it sold!  Let your Realtor stay in their lane and work on getting your house sold. Leave the furniture, lighting, color choices, and organizing to us.

If the homeowner or agent has “staged” the home, it’s time to bring in a professional. RESA stagers are experts at making homes irresistible. We often take between a full day and a full week to stage a home. It varies by the amount of work we’ve been contracted to do and the size of the home.

The other thing that your Realtor can do is change the price…by increasing it! Most people think they must drop the price in order to get new activity on their MLS listing, but that’s not the only way it works. If you invest in staging your property, you can actually raise the price, and you still get new activity on your MLS listing. A change in your MLS listing makes all the other Realtors in your market pay attention to your listing. So, put a couple of hundred or thousand dollars into repairs or fresh staging, and raise the price in order to cover those expenses. Your house can sell for a higher price, and sell faster. There’s no reason to race to the bottom if the house is properly prepared and priced.

One of the sellers we’ve been working with recently sent this to us:

I just wanted to write and let you know that we have had two full price offers on our house in the first two days it has been on the market.  Everything worked exactly like you said it would–they came in, fell in love with the house, and put in their offers.  The offer we accepted was from a couple with two young children….[We heard that when you are downsizing] you are going to be tempted to try to get money for all your antiques and your grandmother’s China. But first of all, no one wants any of that stuff. And second of all, the real money you’re going to make is in selling the house for a good price. So you should spend your time on getting rid of stuff so the house will sell for top dollar, not on trying to make money On the small stuff. That turned out to be so true for us. 

Here is just one room in the home that she sold.

Before Home Staging:

After Home Staging:

Which home looks more attractive and worth your money?

Which home looks larger, brighter, more updated?

Which home features the home’s assets, like windows, a fireplace, and installed lighting, things that the buyer is actually buying?

A smart Realtor will book you for professional home staging, and the Realtor will also arrange for professional photography and marketing so that, like these buyers above, qualified and interested buyers are ready to make an offer on your property when you are ready to show it. This listing was prepared and offered by Brett Furman of ReMax, Wayne.