Selling Your Home

Does Home Staging Really Work?

Quite simply, yes and please check out my testimonials to hear what my clients think!

Nothing appeals more to a buyer than a clean and defined space without all the clutter and personal effects of the current owner. This helps the potential buyer create an emotional connection with the property and an emotional attachment to your property which leads to a faster sale and often for more.  

While statistics for this emerging business in Australia are not available, we believe that the lessons learnt overseas where home staging has been active for many years are indicative of the results achieved in Australia and indeed in our own experience here in Tasmania.

A Real Estate Agent (referred to as a Realtor) in the San Francisco Bay area suspected that staged homes sell faster and for a higher price than those that are not staged. His comments and analysis is below.

“In discussions with colleagues and based on my own experiences with staging I wanted to test that theory.  I analyzed 2,772 properties sold between March 1 and September 30, 1999, in eight cities: Atherton, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Portola Valley and Sunnyvale. Out of that group, I took a sample of 129 properties that had been staged, or 4.7 percent of the total. This sample represented condominiums, townhouses and single-family residences. They ranged in list price from $229,000 to $4.8 million.

The following results show marked differences between the sample of staged homes and the total group, which consisted of both staged and unstaged properties. For the group of 2,772 properties, the average number of days on the market was 30.9, and the average difference in sales price over list price was 1.6 percent.
 
For the sample of staged homes, the average number of days on the market was 13.9 -- about half of the time for houses in the general sample. The average difference in selling price over list price was 6.3 percent, nearly four times as much as for the other group of homes. Please note that the staged sample was not skewed by one or two outstanding properties. The homes in the sample were fairly similar in terms of days on the market and net sales difference.

 It would appear from the above that buyers, like Cinderella's prince, want to see the house "dressed up." Judging from the net sales difference, they are willing to pay for it, too. In addition, this phenomenon is occurring in an extremely strong sellers' market that would not appear to need any help.

I believe that the above findings have significant implications for Realtors, interior designers, prospective sellers and buyers and anyone else who stands to benefit from the marketing and sale of residences. And this information is pertinent not just to the Bay Area, but could be instructive throughout the country as well”.

Anyone with marketing experience will see the value in spending money on advertising. But nobody is going to want to pay for a brochure which is poorly laid out or has typing errors.

Most people will detail their car prior to placing an ad in the paper. They would see the expense of doing this as a necessity to sell the car for the highest price. I went through this exercise recently with a car I sold privately. Firstly I had the car serviced then 2 new tyers and finally the car was detailed inside and out including touching up any stone chips. The cost of doing this was about 7% of the total value of the car. Was it worth it? Yes! I sold the car for what I wanted within 2 weeks. Most people would say “so what” we do that when we sell our cars, however those same people may find it difficult to come to terms with spending money on presenting their homes for sale even though the stakes are far greater.

Most people don’t sell their homes often enough to learn the lessons and skills needed to improve the presentation prior to listing their homes for sale.

They may believe that the way that they have lived in the home and the possessions that they own will be appealing to buyers. Or they may not have even given the presentation side of selling any thought.

Would you photograph your car covered in dirt for an advert in the Trading Post? Or show a potential buyer your car when it is full of fast food wrappers and dirt? Of course not – because you know that good presentation sells.