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Staging Your Home To Sell Fast
By Scott Roberts, 16 Mar 13:00
This is the first of five articles on staging.
So you intend to sell your home. As soon as you make that decision and commence that process, everything changes. Your Home is no longer a
home. This is the hard truth and you must change your mindset to be successful or risk leaving tens of thousands of dollars on the escrow or closing table.
Your “Home” is now a “House for Sale” which is a Product in a very competitive market of which buyers have ZERO emotional attachment to initially.
You and your family live in your wonderful home. When you put it on the market, you are officering a product for sale and the family does not go
with it. So your home becomes a house. The house becomes a product and you will either be a very smart merchandiser and sell your product and make top dollar …. or not. The choice is yours to make and if you want top dollar, you need to learn how to merchandise it like a professional.
To Merchandise
Merriam-Webster defines it as follows:
1 : to buy and sell in business
2 : to promote for or as if for sale
To carry on commerce, to buy and sell, to promote for sale… like merchandising a movie star.
Another dictionary defines it this way: promote a product by developing strategies for packaging, display, and publicity
Packaging, display and publicity. That makes sense too. By now I think you get the idea. You have to be a smart marketer to make the big bucks on the sale of your home house.
Merchandising your House is about creating an environment in and around your property that appeals to the emotional needs and desires of the buyer. I am not just talking about staging. It is much more than that. (This article relates to residential real estate.)
To some, the term merchandising might sound cold. We are talking about a business transaction that involves the sale of an asset that might range from a few hundred thousand to several million dollars. You bet it is business. But here is the catch; we want to merchandise the house as warm, inviting, open, spacious and energetic. Not cold or calculating so please do not confuse the term with what we intend to create as an environment for your buyers.
The Mindset
To be a successful merchandiser, you must learn to think like a buyer. To be successful in selling your house for top dollar you must be able to understand how buyers behave and what causes them to take action to buy a house.
Living in a home and selling a house are two very different things.
You must accept that statement as fact right from the beginning. Someone once said that you do not get a second chance to make a first impression.
Once you have completed all the action items outlined below you will then be ready to make a first impression… but not until then.
Metrics on Merchandising your house for sale:
Houses listed prior to proper preparation averaged 136 days on the market.
Houses properly merchandised averaged 32-42 days on the market based on a HomeGain survey.
In addition, preparing your house for sale and staging it produced the follow financial results:
Most sellers resist preparing and staging their house for four reasons:
1. They do not want to go to the trouble
2. They do not want to change the way they live in their home
3. They do not want to spend the money
4. They do not know how important it is to achieve top dollar in the sale.
You, the Producer
Think of it this way: you are the Production Designer for a movie. Your other family members and friends are the art director, prop master and
production assistants. Is the movie going to be a romantic and joyful or a horror film?
The set you are designing is the house you own and prospective buyers are your audience. Do you want a blockbuster that makes a lot of money, or do you want an art film that appeals to a very small audience and most likely will lose money? You decide.
Start by walking outside and view your house through the buyer’s eyes, unemotional and detached. Pretend you have never seen it before.
This is where to start.
“Buyers imagination is almost none, so they can’t visualize it redone”
Things you might need
-Toolkit-Paint and painting tools
-Krud Kutter and other cleaning supplies
-Boxes
-A list of contractors to help you including a handyman
How-to Extra Advice
Stage every inch of the house
Tags: staging selling home house