Drive-by home staging

While working on bedrooms, living rooms and bathrooms in a property for sale is key for a home stager in presenting a property, the most important element of the home is quite often neglected as part of the preparation. Clients and buyers like to see a nicely made bed, or perhaps a nice sofa that has been hired for the sale process, but home staging and property presentation is so much more than that.

The art of home staging is all about first impressions, and where does the first, first impression occur? The front yard. This vital piece of real estate is where you can win or lose a prospective buyer and if it is not right or does not convey the right message, all the internal home staging work in the world is not going to get the buyer back for a second look, particularly if they are only doing an initial drive-by. Curb appeal in any property for sale is a MUST.

Lawns must be cut, overgrown trees must be pruned and tidied, paths must be clutter free and easily accessed and gardens beds weeded and mulched.

The front of the home needs to be carefully reviewed too. Are there loose bricks, rotten timberwork, inoperative doorbells or cracked glass in the windows? A buyer looks for these issues and mentally calculates what it will cost to replace should they decide to buy. Then, typically, they multiply that cost by two to be safe and then look for that figure off the asking price.

Worst still, if the buyer is making these calculations and looking for issues with the property prior to getting to the front door, imagine what they will find when they enter the house and the dollar value they will tally up inside the property.

Yes this process is time consuming to correct if you work all week and have limited time of a weekend, but this is where Shift by Design can assist. Shift by Design are specialists in preparing property for sale in the Hobart, Tasmania market and can provide cost effective creative solutions to assist you sell your home faster and for a better price. We review property from a buyer perspective and as such see the issues that will put buyers off. A small investment in property presentation may save you thousands in a price drop.

Is staging a home subjective?

It is an interesting experience being a property presenter (or home stager) in that you can encounter some negative feedback from people who have never used your services. I recently heard 2nd hand comments from an agent who had advised their vendor not to consider staging a property as the process was 'too subjective' and really only reflected the ideas of one person.

This raises an interesting point. Having your home evaluated for sale by a home stager IS a subjective practice. It is the review of one property by one person. So in that case, how does the home stager know what the buying audience is actually looking for? Well, I would suggest experience, training, knowledge of home types and the fact that as a stager, I am independant of that property as some pretty good reasons. I have no emotional link to the property other than to see it presented in the best possible light.

It is also knowing what the buying audience is NOT looking for in a property. How many times have you seen property listings in the real estate guide or online where you struggle to see the carpet for the boxes packed up on it, or the kitchen counter colour is hidden due to last night's dishes being piled up waiting to be done. While these are easily sorted, it is the issue of funiture layout, the quantity of furniture and the amount of knick-knacks that go with it that people cannot see past.

Buyers struggle to determine the use for any given room in a property unless it is clearly defined. As they walk around the property viewing what could be their potential home they need emotional involvement. Defining the property and the way it is presented is what stagers do, it is what they know. They use their skills to create emotional involvement for potential buyers and to make the process of selling a home easier for the agent.

So is the process of professionally preparing a home and staging it subjective? Yes. But that subjective opinion is just as professional as that of a doctor or a lawyer as we offer insight into making the most of the marketing of a home at sale time.

Shift by Design offer full property presentation and home staging service to the greater Hobart area (Tasmania, Australia) and can assist with the preparation of occupied homes, or professionally staged vacant apartments or homes with their own stock of rental furniture and accessories.

Visit the Shift by Design website for more information