How Staging Improves Your Chances Of Selling Your Home Quickly

Selling your home will likely be one of the most important financial decisions you ever make in your life. Therefore it’s important that you try and maximize the returns you get from this financial transaction. It might be difficult due to your personal attachment, but you will have to start seeing your home as a “product” and think about ways to make it more attractive for potential buyers.

One of these ways is staging.

What Is Staging?

Staging is the step that usually follows decluttering. It’s about “beautifying” your house by deep-cleaning it, re-arranging the furniture, and adding decorations to make it more attractive for potential buyers, taking photos for the listing, or creating a virtual tour. Staging is about deliberately (or professionally) preparing your home for potential buyers and letting them see it in a way that makes them fall in love with your property. This increases your chances of selling quickly because if it sits in the market too long, your chances of selling at your preferred price will start to go down.

The Importance of Staging

Just like decluttering, staging is crucial for making your house more presentable. For some houses, it’s the cherry on top of a gorgeous sundae, but for most others, it is a core “ingredient.”

Depersonalize Your House

One of the core aims of staging is to depersonalize your house. Just like decluttering, which gives potential buyers more “space” to think, depersonalization (via staging) gives potential buyers more “emotional” room. We, humans, are empathetic creatures and many potential buyers have a hard time picturing themselves occupying a house that’s full of your family pictures, heirlooms, and personal possessions. Whether you are staging the house yourself or leveraging the services of professionals, you depersonalize your house and present it like a beautiful blank canvas, which a potential buyer will imagine “painting” with their personal colours. This can be a strong factor in nudging potential buyers towards making a quick buying decision.

Enhances The Strengths And Diminishes The Weaknesses

Staging, especially when it’s done appropriately, makes a house significantly more presentable by enhancing its strengths and diminishing its weaknesses. That doesn’t mean staging hides any scars your property has. It simply redirects more potential “gazes” to the beauty, and minor problems seem pale and inconsequential by comparison.

Competitive Edge

About 95,151 houses were sold in GTA in 2020, roughly translating to over 260 houses a day. When that many houses are being sold in a single day, you want yours to stand out and grab the attention of the buyers. A staged house will have a significantly better chance of attracting the attention of potential buyers compared to a plain and unprepared property.

Better Online Visibility

People conduct a decent amount of online research when they are buying a new phone, so it’s only natural that they conduct a more exhaustive one when buying something that can easily be 500 times the cost, i.e., a house. A properly staged house will most likely yield better photos for online listings. And better photos are an important factor for potential buyers researching homes online when it comes to short-listing the properties they might consider visiting. If your home doesn’t have a compelling online presence (as a listing), of which staged photos are an important element, you might not attract a large enough buyer pool to sell at your desired price.

Staging Adds Value To The Sale

Both decluttering and staging add value to the seller and are crucial factors for fetching you the desired price for three reasons:

• They attract more buyers faster and ensure that your property doesn’t keep sitting in the market for a long time. The longer your house sits on the market, the farther you might need to move below your original asking price.
• Decluttered and staged houses seem “premium” compared to unprepared houses, so potential buyers might be more inclined to pay you the asking price. They might not have enough leverage to negotiate down the price too much.
• A staged house can motivate a buyer to act faster. They would think that someone else might move in if they took their time, so they would try and close the deal faster, saving you both time and waiting “costs.”

Final Words

Staging is usually coupled with decluttering (which comes first). It’s important to understand that while decluttering and staging might not have the potential to help you rise above and beyond the market conditions (like selling at a premium price in a buyer’s market), they do have the potential to make the sale smoother and more profitable for you. Even if you see them from an ROI lens, you will find out they are avenues worth pursuing. And when you are ready to put your house on the market, consider staging to maximize the impact. Together, decluttering and staging will attract more (and better) potential buyers and, hopefully, will give you more negotiation power.

If you are still unsure how decluttering and staging can help you sell your house better, feel free to contact me. I can help you understand how decluttering and staging (among a few other things) can help you maximize your selling potential.