Home Staging

As a Certified Home Marketing Specialist (CHMS), I can tell you that when staging your home prior to placing it on the market, you will drastically increase the home appeal to potential buyers. Why, might you ask? First, many people have a hard time visualizing their things in a vacant home. Second, in a non-staged home, many times the homeowner has cluttered areas, which turns off potential buyers because they see the space as being small. Third, by staging the home it depersonalizes it. Instead of the potential homeowner walking around seeing someone else’s family portraits, they see generic portraits and psychologically imagine their family in the picture frames. Fourth, and final reason, this may be hard to believe, but team spirit may deter a buyer. Using these popular Texas teams for example, some buyers who are HUGE Texas Longhorn fans walk into a home that has Texas A&M everywhere and are permanently distracted by their rival team. There have been instances where this potential homeowner has walked out of the home for that sole reason. You don’t want to turn off prospective buyers unintentionally.

In a seller’s market, staging your home has a strong potential to sell it on the first day it’s listed. On the other hand, in a buyer’s market, your home has the potential to sell in a matter of days, not months when staging is incorporated.

 
National Association of REALTORS®’s (NAR) 2017 Profile of Home Staging (https://www.nar.realtor/reports/profile-of-home-staging)
 
Highlights:

• Seventy-seven percent of buyers’ agents said staging a home made it easier for a buyer to visualize the property as a future home.
• Staging the living room for buyers was found to be most important (55 percent), followed by staging the master bedroom (51 percent), and staging the kitchen (41 percent).
• Thirty-eight percent of sellers’ agents said they stage all sellers’ homes prior to listing them for sale.
• The most common rooms that are staged include the living room (83 percent), kitchen (76 percent), master bedroom (69 percent), and the dining room (66 percent).