Home Staging For Investment Returns

Sellers are seeking to maximize return for the investment and risk of home ownership--an investment transaction, not just a real estate sale. The appreciation (increase in value) of real estate is the biggest source of wealth in this country. The sales price of your current home determines how much you can invest in the next one, and the bigger that investment the bigger your “dividend” will be when it is time to sell again. With average ownership of a home between 4 and 7 years, getting top dollar every time compounds your net worth quickly. Leaving money on the table eats into your return for years and years to come.

Home staging helps maximize that return. According to the National Association of Realtors, for every dollar sellers put into staging, the sellers get $4 back. The average increase over the listing price is 6.32%, enough to cover your realtor fees. On a $500,000 house the added value of staging is $32,000! No wonder the professional staging trend started in northern California, one of the hottest markets in the country.

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Home Staging Allows the Buyer to Buy a Life Style

In a real estate transaction, the buyer is buying a life style, not a house! Buyers coming through the doors today want to see what their new home will be like. They are busy visualizing how it fits their needs rather than assessing how nice this stranger’s house looks. They are checking to see if their furniture will fit, determining eating arrangements, considering traffic patterns, deciding where to hang the family heirloom, and a myriad of other things.

Professional home stagers specialize in techniques that make it easier for the prospective buyer to visualize the house fitting them. Each home is unique with features that could be positive or negative. The professional home stager is the specialist that sees things from the point of view of buyers and gives a house an emotional appeal. These specialists are themselves imaginative and can come up with a plan that will enhance the ambiance in a way that fit several different potential lifestyles. In some cases, the best return on a house is obtained by aiming at a very specific target audience. Knowing what approaches fit your home is what creates the value delivered by the home staging professional.

To learn more, keep reading! To buy the book 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home NOW, click here.

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.

To learn more, keep reading! To buy the book 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home NOW, click here.

Home Staging: Simple Makes Houses Sell

One person’s treasure is another’s trash. The steps of cleaning, getting rid of clutter, depersonalizing, decorating and accessorizing, and maintaining are well known and checklists abound to tempt the do-it-yourselfer. However the beloved picture painted by your dearly loved grandmother, hanging in its hallowed place in the foyer, may well be the same one that created the death knell mentioned before.

The judgment of the objective, professional home stager lies at the heart of the value they add. Professional home staging involves more than pointing out the chair that “sets off” the room for homeowner also makes the room look too small. Years of living in a home make it difficult for the do-it-yourselfer to see their home used for lifestyles different than their own. The one-size-fits-all approach produced by the same time worn techniques usually results in a bland impression that fails to ignite the prospect’s imagination. A professional home stager thoughtfully creates a carefully customized impression of your home that results in quicker sales and higher prices.

Learn more about home staging by purchasing 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home NOW.

Home Staging Vs Listing

In today’s market, a listing agent should be a professional who specializes in delivering the greatest number of qualified potential buyers. The home stager is the professional that will create an even greater return on investment on your biggest asset. With so much at stake, it is no wonder that professional home staging has become such a highly valuable and rapidly growing specialization.

To learn more about home staging, buy the book 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home NOW!