When it comes to the housing market, Austin is faring better than most of the country. Nevertheless, with home sales sagging, you want your home to be the standout that makes the best first impression! That first impression can mean the difference between receiving serious offers or being subjected to months of potential buyers who walk away without neither an offer nor a good impression. How can you ensure your home will make the best impression? If you’re selling your home, you may first want to consider enlisting a professional Austin home stager.
Although home staging has been around since the early 1970’s, most home sellers probably aren’t familiar with what many real estate agents understand is a mandatory tool for quickly selling a home. Not surprisingly, many home sellers often confuse home staging with interior decorating. Interior decorating and home staging are completely different! Home staging emphasizes the house while interior decorating emphasizes the homeowner’s personality. And when you’re selling your home, you don’t want your personal taste hindering a sale.
In the early 1970’s real estate agent, Barbara Schwarz realized that homes would sell for higher prices if they were properly prepared. She coined the term “staging” and has staged and sold more than 3,000 homes and taught the staging concept to 700,000-plus real estate agents and home stagers. Austin home stagers are among the thousands of professionals who are responsible for faster home sales at higher prices!
Because a staged home can appeal to a broader spectrum of prospective buyers, the chances of selling faster and for more money is increased dramatically. Simply stated, home staging involves turning an ordinary, lived-in home into a model home by virtue of swapping cluttered, personalized collections with de-cluttered, stylish, neutral pieces you probably already own. The goal of staging is to help potential homebuyers visualize themselves in the home. A professional stager understands that when you put your home on the market, it is no longer your home but a product that requires marketing. Unfortunately, this is usually the biggest hurdle for a homeowner to conquer and the most important step in staging.
Homeowners become attached to their things – those things that define their personality and life. On the other hand, when a potential homebuyer walks into your home, they want to see themselves there – not you. Once your home is on the market, you want it as neutral as possible. We’re not talking colors, but how the home is presented overall. Psychologically, potential buyers need to see themselves living in this house with their things and a de-cluttered and neutral palette accomplishes this.
Living in this area, home sellers have access to dozens of professional Austin home stagers who will evaluate the interior and exterior of the property and with their keen eye for design, determine what items to remove, shift, clean and repair before the home is put on the market. Placing existing furniture correctly to create more open space, removing or placing personal items where they will not be too overpowering, and adding décor accessories to highlight the focal points of the home are just a few of the simple tasks they can assist with. Transforming homes so that they look spacious, clean and attractive is their goal. A minor change, such as a piece of furniture to make a room appear larger or packing away unnecessary clutter can be the fix that makes the sale. Psychologically, you want buyers to see your home as their new, ready to move-in home and they can’t do that with family photos, a cluttered kitchen counter, or the cat’s litter box in full view.
On a personal note, a couple years ago we placed our home – which I thought was clean and tastefully decorated – on the market. We had a lot of traffic but no offers in two months of listing. We hired a home stager who stripped our decorating down to minimum; rearranged our furniture; and moved a great deal of our furniture to our garage. In two days, a couple that had already been to the house twice, came back and submitted an offer that afternoon. We accepted. We since have recommended staging to friends who had the same results.
Should you find yourself selling your home, you may want to contact an Austin home stager. A variety of stagers with prices to fit your budget can be found at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Austin+TX+home+stagers
Chris Andreski
