President Calvin Lindberg of the Canadian Real Estate Association recently explained, “The essential selling ingredients in today’s market are realistic pricing, marketing, and preparation.
The key to boosting demand for a particular house is to generate excitement and a perception that the property may not be available for long.”
The key to boosting demand for a particular house is to generate excitement and a perception that the property may not be available for long.”
Divine Home, a home staging Oakville specialist, serving Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Mississauga, Canada offers these great tips:
Preparation = Home Staging!
Preparation = Home Staging!
The way you live in your home and the way you market a house for sale are two very different things. You may think “my home is nice to live in”, but you’ve grown to accept its more “charming” features over time. A buyer will not have the same tolerance as you... and that’s why as a seller, you need to ensure your home is prepped for selling.
Successful builders use Model Homes and Model Suites to sell their projects because they know that presenting a show home environment creates the wow! factor that is enticing to buyers and compels them to “fall in love”. That’s the recipe for writing up offers and that’s why fluffing, primping, staging... works.
There are 5 main activities that form part of a sound staging plan:
1. Clean, clean, clean! A buyer’s tolerance for dirt or the perception of dirt will be very low. While selling, your home needs to be spotless, especially bathrooms and kitchens. If keeping this level of cleanliness is not achievable during the selling period, consider hiring a cleaning service.
2. De-cluttering – What you want is to reduce the number of items that a buyer needs to look at so they can focus on the more important features of your home, like flooring, layout, number of rooms, etc. An additional benefit of de-cluttering is that the rooms look larger... more space is always appealing to buyers. This means removing pieces of furniture that clutter a room, removing excessive knick knacks or pictures on a wall, and making sure your closets aren’t busting at the seams.
3. Neutralizing – 90% of people have difficulty seeing the forest through the trees, so it’s important that décor and wall colours are mostly neutral. This will reduce the mental efforts buyers will have to go through to try and figure out if their furniture will look good.
4. De-personalizing – This refers to family pictures, diplomas, religious or cultural artefacts, etc. It is not that a potential buyer will necessarily be offended by any of these; however, in order to allow buyers to mentally move in, they mustn’t be reminded they are in someone else’s house. So tuck all of these items away.
5. Décor and staging – Bringing in some trendy accents, throw pillows and artwork goes a long way to creating the wow factor that is so important to maximize the showing experience.
Fact: Statistics show that staged homes sell 50% faster than homes that aren’t! Hiring a professional home stager yields a great return on investment. A staging professional can give your home maximum ‘wow’ for minimum cost. If you are in the Oakville/Mississauga/Burlington area, call Divine Home to make your home stand out from the competition.
Divine Home Staging, Interior Decorating and Decor.
