Kitchen before and after home staging
Are you looking for a home? Or perhaps you are an agent who works with buyers. Have you been suspicious of staged homes because you are afraid the staging will be concealing something? Although it’s caveat emptor (buyer beware) in any home purchase, there is no need to fear the staged home. Ethical stagers do not conceal flaws; they emphasize positive attributes. Go ahead and look at staged homes with an open mind just as you would any other. Just don’t omit your due diligence and get your home inspection as you also would with any other home. In fact, you will find there are benefits for buyers in looking at staged homes.
Staged homes are more likely to be move-in ready. A Maritz research study found that 6 out of 10 home buyers wanted move-in ready homes and were willing to pay a premium for them. Stagers always advise their home selling clients to fix everything, clean everything and update what is cost effectively updated. They recommend neutral colours which will make the home a blank slate for you as a new owner. If you consider staged homes, you are more likely to get one that will meet your needs for the time being until you are ready to put your own stamp on the place.
Staged homes have usually been well maintained. Home owners who stage their properties are often those who take pride in them and wish to prepare them in the best possible way for new owners. They are the sort of people who wanted to protect their equity all along.
Staged homes help viewers visualize potential. Nine out of ten people have trouble visualizing things that aren’t there, or imagining rooms without things that are there — like excess clutter or too much furniture. Stagers address these problems. They define rooms for typical uses. They show how furniture arrangement could be done in small or strangely proportioned rooms. By having things laid out for you, you can avoid passing up a perfectly good house because you couldn’t imagine how it could work.
Staging helps buyers make an emotional connection. Although we might think we are logical decision makers, behavioural research has shown that every buying decision involves emotions. And, furthermore, the more important the decision, the more it must ‘feel’ right. Good staging creates emotional connections by selling lifestyle and stimulating all the senses. If you are still on the fence about making an offer when all the logical reasons point to it, it could be because you haven’t connected with the house on an emotional level. Staged homes promote those connections. In a hot sellers market, staging helps you make the right decisions quickly so you don’t lose out to another bidder, or helps you avoid buyers remorse you might suffer if you jumped into a deal totally based on logic.
So don’t pass up viewing staged homes. As a matter of fact if they were well staged, you might not even know they were staged anyway.
Author, Martha Stanton-Smith, owner of Rearrangements, is a Certified Canadian Staging Professional who helps serious home sellers in Kingston, Ontario get full worth for their homes. She completed her staging training in 2006. Visit her profile here:
