What the heck is home staging?

Original article here

Home staging can be defined in a number of different ways, but my personal favorite is 'the process of turning a home back into a house'. What do you mean by that, you say? It’s really simple. A home is something personal, a showpiece for your specific tastes. A house is a commodity, something that virtually anyone can walk into and easily identify with, enticing them to buy.

In looking at what home staging is, it’s easy to also look at what home staging is not. Home staging is not interior design or interior decorating. If anything, I would say that they are pretty much polar opposites. With interior design and interior decorating, the goal is to make your home more in tune with your personality and specific tastes. Home staging tries to strip away that personalization to help create mass appeal.

Before home staging

Some of the aspects of home staging are related to another field of expertise you may have heard about: professional organizing. With professional organizing, the goal is to clear out the clutter that we all seem to love to accumulate over time and make our living spaces more efficient and user-friendly. Likewise, with home staging, de-cluttering is at the heart of the process.

De-cluttering serves a multitude of purposes. First, de-cluttering a space allows potential buyers to see the space better. If a kitchen is loaded up with bills, plates, microwaves, toasters, mixers, glasses and toys and you can’t see the countertops, it’s impossible to see the kitchen as it should be seen. Likewise, a family room with children’s toys all over the floor and furniture that blocks fireplaces keeps buyers from seeing the best features the room has to offer. If you aren’t creating a positive, memorable impression, there’s no reason for a buyer to choose your home over the competition down the street.

Second, you want to sell, right? Get in the mindset of moving now. It will help you detach emotionally from your home, particularly if you have lived there a long time and created many lasting memories. By pre-packing some of that clutter, you are mentally preparing yourself to move. When you sell your house, the memories get to come with you.

After home staging

Space planning is another concept that’s used frequently in home staging. A furniture arrangement in a living room, for example, might suit your family’s specific needs, but may not be the ideal use of the space for your average potential buyer. Moving furniture, removing (or even sometimes adding) pieces to reflect the best layout and use of the room, including the most appropriate function are also key concepts. A dining room should be a dining room, not a home office!

Curb appeal is something that’s easily overlooked because our focus is usually on the interior of the house, but what’s the first thing a potential buyer is going to see? Many buyers will drive by a potential home before they schedule a walk-through with their real estate agent. If they don’t like what they see on the outside, they may easily pass over what could be a great interior space, so don’t forget about the curb appeal!

Color is something that is a major factor in home sales. There is a lot of psychology that goes along with colors used in homes. The object of the game is mass appeal. If the inside of your home looks like a crayon box exploded, you’re likely doing a major disservice to yourself and your buyer pool. Likewise, a home with plain white walls can easily leave buyers feeling cold and sterile. Knowing what colors work best for your particular home can easily make or break a sale and it’s one of the easiest changes to make.

Finally, accessorizing is a key component to home staging. Yes, we’ve de-cluttered and taken away a bunch of the things that you felt made your house a home. If you take away too much, though, all the personality will be removed. Sometimes we need to bring back in a splash of color and some personality to make the home more inviting, welcoming, and most importantly, containing that mass appeal needed to capture the highest number of potential buyers.

When all is said and done, home staging gives you an edge over your competition, and in this market, there’s plenty of it to go around! Home staging can mean the difference between selling in a month or a year. It can help preserve the value of your home, often translating into several thousand dollars in your pocket that you might not have received otherwise.

In future articles, we’ll explore how to identify the different areas of home staging, how to spend your money wisely and even some tips for staging your home on a tight budget. If you have a home staging question or would like to share a tip, please feel free to contact me. It’s up to all of us to help turn the real estate market around, because the economy revolves around real estate.