When a buyer starts to tell him or herself the story that, “this is my house,” rather than “a house lived in by another family,” resistance dissipates. The likelihood of the buyer making a strong offer increases.
In other words, when buyers start making emotional decisions, home sellers return higher profits.
And in that, the details matter. Alot.
This is why, when it comes to helping home owners maximize profits, working with just any “ordinary home stager,” simply will not do. After interviewing a host of qualified candidates, unanimously, we chose Meagan from Beckett Staging to bring this home’s story to life.
I’ll stop short of saying that the staging was THE reason that the house sold. After all, Rich and Angela had done a phenomenal job of both improving and maintaining the property in their 3+ years as owners.
But I don’t think it’s any stretch to say that Meagan’s work, coupled with first-class professional photography, set the stage for us to generate 20 showings and more than one offer, within the first three weeks. This, mind you, this was a high-priced property, in a softer market, during the month of January. Historically one of the slowest times of the year for buyer activity.
When we hosted an invitation-only “Broker’s Open House,” our second week on the market, it felt as though more of the 20 brokers in attendance asked “who did your staging,” than asked questions about the house itself.
And while we were absolutely thrilled by the reception, the feedback, the end result, to me, it was more common sense than anything.
Home staging and presentation is just one of about a dozen of so key indicators that we analyze as we guide homeowners through the process of preparing their homes to sell.
When Rich, Angela and I sat down last September and they posed that question, they already knew the answer. I already knew the answer.
It would have been a heck of a lot more “affordable” to simply leave select pieces of their own furniture behind. But the truth is and always was, the best course of action was to have the home professionally staged.
Leaving the house vacant or sparsely furnished, to save a couple bucks, would have meant taking an unnecessary risk. It would have meant putting the onus on the home buyer to fill in the blanks.
And that would have been a fundamental mistake.
It’s been our experience that the path of least resistance is rarely the same path that leads to a superior result.