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.