Home Staging Advice For Sellers
- By Beverly Manago
- Published 03/4/2010
- Selling
- Unrated
As a prospective seller, you may have visited at least one other home up for sale. If you have, you may have noticed a certain uninhabited ambiance to the place, despite its being furnished and decorated. This is not the fault of the seller-or his or her agent. Rather, it is a deliberate and successfully executed effect, designed to facilitate the sale of the property. Interestingly, it actually helps to make your home appear as if nobody really lives there.
Why is this so? Well, the first reason is to avoid making a visitor (and prospective buyer) feel like an intruder when he or she shows up. If personal effects and signs of a long history with the house abound, he or she might feel bad about displacing you-even though you are willingly selling the house.
Secondly, you might want to safeguard your privacy, not just for your own sense of dignity, but to preserve a good bargaining position. If a buyer finds out that you are not in a comfortable financial situation, he or she will feel better about his or her chances of successfully driving down the price of the residence. You might also want to hide anything that clearly gives away any strong religious or political viewpoints. You would be surprised at how many people will actually refuse to buy a house from somebody with radically different views from their own. This might seem odd and impractical, but people do not always act 100% rationally when they make large purchases.
So, how do you pull o
ff the "disappearing act" of removing personal traces and private information from your home, when you know that prospective buyers will be coming to view it while you are out?
Firstly, make sure mail is stowed away and not allowed to gather on the floor below the main slot. You should be especially careful to stow away things like bills or credit notices. Even if you tuck these away in a drawer, that might not be enough. A person testing the furniture might find the papers by accident, to say nothing of people who are being deliberately prying.
Secondly, get rid of things like family photographs, or documents like diplomas, awards, etc. These are too personal. In addition, information about your educational background might set off one of a buyer's prejudices. You never know what somebody might think of your school, major, etc.
Thirdly, you yourself might want to stay out of sight, or make sure to be out of the house completely when your agent escorts buyers around the house. Quite understandably, you may be concerned about somebody (maybe even the agent) stealing or destroying your valuables. Keep these out of the way, then. Put them in a safe storage space. Money and jewelry might go into a bank safety deposit box. This should not be too hard: you may have already begun the process of safely stowing your valuables away, in preparation for the move.
If you are putting your house up for sale and will be having buyers to see it, you might want to pull off this "vanishing" act, to make room for the buyer's imagination, and also to get a good price.
Why is this so? Well, the first reason is to avoid making a visitor (and prospective buyer) feel like an intruder when he or she shows up. If personal effects and signs of a long history with the house abound, he or she might feel bad about displacing you-even though you are willingly selling the house.
Secondly, you might want to safeguard your privacy, not just for your own sense of dignity, but to preserve a good bargaining position. If a buyer finds out that you are not in a comfortable financial situation, he or she will feel better about his or her chances of successfully driving down the price of the residence. You might also want to hide anything that clearly gives away any strong religious or political viewpoints. You would be surprised at how many people will actually refuse to buy a house from somebody with radically different views from their own. This might seem odd and impractical, but people do not always act 100% rationally when they make large purchases.
So, how do you pull o
Firstly, make sure mail is stowed away and not allowed to gather on the floor below the main slot. You should be especially careful to stow away things like bills or credit notices. Even if you tuck these away in a drawer, that might not be enough. A person testing the furniture might find the papers by accident, to say nothing of people who are being deliberately prying.
Secondly, get rid of things like family photographs, or documents like diplomas, awards, etc. These are too personal. In addition, information about your educational background might set off one of a buyer's prejudices. You never know what somebody might think of your school, major, etc.
Thirdly, you yourself might want to stay out of sight, or make sure to be out of the house completely when your agent escorts buyers around the house. Quite understandably, you may be concerned about somebody (maybe even the agent) stealing or destroying your valuables. Keep these out of the way, then. Put them in a safe storage space. Money and jewelry might go into a bank safety deposit box. This should not be too hard: you may have already begun the process of safely stowing your valuables away, in preparation for the move.
If you are putting your house up for sale and will be having buyers to see it, you might want to pull off this "vanishing" act, to make room for the buyer's imagination, and also to get a good price.
Beverly Manago
Beverly Manago is a freelance writer focused on the real estate industry, and a consultant for My Single Property Websites, a web 2.0 marketing tool that lets real estate agents create stunning virtual tours and single property sites easily. She also contributes to the Real Estate Email Marketing there.
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