Home Staging: Buyers Have Access To Listings, So You Have To Stand Out!

Prospective buyers now have the same access to listings of homes as real estate agents. The contents of multi-listing services, once closely guarded by realtors, is now readily available on the Internet. This has tilted the market structure to favor buyers who know what is on the market while the sellers are not yet able to identify the prospective buyers. Search engines like Google make it easy for buyers to gather all kinds of community information. All this has reduced the buyers’ dependence on realtors. Prospects are now capable of handing the realtor a list of what they want to see before the realtor’s list is out of the drawer! These prospective buyers go into the home and almost instantly form an emotional reaction to what they see and feel. One misplaced picture or one too many pieces of furniture can prove the instant death knell of interest in a home. Prospects know there are alternatives and will quickly be off to the next home on their list. Over time this can produce a seller’s nightmare - an empty house. An empty house gives off a distressed feel - a sense that the owners may dump the property fast and cheap. Ironically, buyers have more difficulty visualizing life in an empty house, perhaps explaining the greater difficulty of selling them.

With professional home staging, saving time means more money. According to a recent study, homes that had not sold in an average of 4.5 months after listing sold within a week of being staged by a professional. Homes staged before listing were under contract more than twice as fast as comparable homes that had not been professionally staged. The old adage the first impression is the only one that counts has always applied to real estate but not with the impact it has now. Just avoiding the problems not noticed by the untrained eye is reason enough for a professional home stager. Home staging professionals carefully prepare for the first critical 10 seconds to create an atmosphere that entices the imagination and creates a longing in the buyer that leads to further investigation—and a possible sale. It has long been understood that the sooner a house is sold after going on the market, the greater the probability that it also commands a higher price.

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