A - Home Staging: What's it all about?
QUICK DESCRIPTION: Home staging is an inexpensive approach for changing the interior appearance of a home. It focuses on the reemployment of an owner's accessories, rearrangement of furniture and just plain simplifying the overly decorated rooms most owners have grown accustomed to. It has evolved into the best home preparation tool and fastest method for improving a property's sale potential.
People usually think interior decorating and home staging are one in the same. Professional interior decorating focuses on fulfilling the owners’ decorating desires and often involves remodeling and the purchase of a lot of furnishings and accessories.
Home staging, on the other hand, promotes the use of what you already have or uses inexpensive acquisitions as accessory props in order to provide a simplified and depersonalized look. It's goal is to modify your home for maximum appeal to the masses at a reasonable cost. Stagers encourage you to view your home as a product to be marketed, to get buyers to view your home as theirs, not as the refuge that fulfills your needs. Staging is referred to under a number of different names, such as: real estate enhancement, home enhancement, interior redesign or simply redesigning.
Rather than trying to impress buyers with your choice of decor, you should strive to influence these prospects with the potential your home offers. This can be accomplished with as simple a concept as rearranging a room’s contents to provide an aesthetically pleasing environment. It may not function the way you want it to, as staging often involves classic examples of form over function.
The concept of staging has produced a boom in a relatively new service that’s geared to help sell a home. The fees for professional stagers can start with a consultation and overall recommendations for as low as a hundred dollars (some even offer a free consultation) to full service engagements at pricey homes that can run into the thousands–with a demonstrated and potential payback of an increased selling price and a much faster sale.
Areas the home stager will concentrate on:Accessorizing Be prepared to show your stager what accessories you have stored away, including collections, pictures and knick-knacks. A new arrangement, placement or focus could bring life to existing decor or your living spaces with things you already own (that you've grown tired of). Although it may not be the look or decorating you currently want, it will be the best to help market your home. Homes that maintain shrines to teddy bears, Elvis, glass figurines, dolls and large collections of just about anything discourages emphasis on showing objectives. Would you ever see these types of personal collections in a model home?
Rearranging furnitureAvoid lining up furniture along all the walls. Consider artful placement at an angle or a rearrangement that modifies current furniture distribution and creates interest, such as creating a cozy reading corner in a large living room, or a small sofa and chair placement that makes more of an intimate conversational area.
Eliminating furnitureRemove excess furniture in most rooms, including bedrooms. Furniture or decor that would be considered unusual or unconventional should be scrutinized. You’re trying to impress buyers, not your friends. Take a clue from builders. Their model homes often utilize scaled down furniture to achieve the illusion of making rooms appear larger. GET YOUR MONEY'S WORTHHome stagers will point out the need for cleaning, eliminating clutter and obvious distractions that need attention or repair.
Save yourself some money and make the most of a professional's time by tackling these mandatory projects prior to inviting one to assess your home.
Selecting a home stager: View their web site for some advanced information and samples of their work. Give them a call. Ask for references. Some of them can refer you to homes they’ve staged that are currently on the market. Of course, your house can sell without their services. But if you’re looking to maximize your home’s appeal in order to sell faster and for top dollar, this is a great option. The efforts are surely worth it; recent growth of the home staging industry is proof of that. Home stagers near you: We've complied a list of home staging companies and individuals (at no charge to them). Here is a list of homestagers in your area. Simply select any of these "redesigners" to link to their web site. HelpingHomeSellers links to over 1500 stager sites. Many stagers display before and after pictures. Just viewing a few sites should demonstrate how a transformed space can add excitement and marketability to just about any room.
Home stagers often travel a considerable distance–so don’t despair if one isn't in your immediate area. Contact them about their rates, areas of expertise or even if they know a stager near you. Stage® is a Federally Registered Trademark of stagedhomes.com
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