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Preparing Your Home for Sale; West Coast Home Staging Trend Meets The East Coast

Like many other fashion, health and life-style trends that have their genesis on the west coast, so does preparing a home for sale using a professional Home Staging Service.  You may be wondering what home staging is all about so let me begin by telling you about a Home Staging seminar I attended yesterday at our local, five star restaurant in Concord Massachusetts, Pappa Razzi.

Home Staging is not interior decorating, which is a process of beautifying a home with the purpose of individualizing it for the homeowner’s lifestyle, needs and personal aesthetic taste.

No, Home Staging is not, I repeat, not simply neatening up the house, and making sure it is decorated for one’s personal taste.  What I learned at the seminar yesterday is that professional home stagers design, rearrange, de-clutter and essentially de-personalize a home so that potential buyers can visualize themselves living there.

The concept of de-personalizing is often difficult for a seller to conceptualize. Why? After living in a home for many years we as human beings tend to develop an emotional attachment to our homes and this tends to cloud our perception.  Our emotional attachment to our homes over time is at the root of why we cannot “see” the features of our homes that buyers may not appreciate.

We overlook the out-dated color scheme and decorating style from ten or more years ago.  We don’t see how small the house looks on Internet photos due to massive amounts of clutter and “stuff” we have accumulated through the years.  We don’t notice the broken, chipped, scratched fixtures and trim. We are emotionally attached to our homes so it is understandable why it is difficult for us to have an unbiased opinion, a fresh perspective of how our home may appear to a buyer on a walk through the house.

I learned that, all other things being equal, a professional Home Staging service is worth their weight in gold.  The National Association of Realtors Statistics illustrate that homes that have been staged sell faster and for more money.  Realtors see this all the time. And, they experience the same disappointment when the seller is ultimately forced to take a huge price reduction because the house didn’t sell at the original price due to poor showings that resulted from lack of proper staging.

Today’s buyers are looking for “turn-key” operations.  This means they do not want to do any work to the house before they move in.  Most buyers cannot visualize what the house will look like in the future.  They want it to look that way right now.

Realtors on the west coast figured it out.  Homes are products.  A product that looks better is more likely to attract the attention of a buyer.  The fact is Realtors know that staging sells homes. Finding a Realtor who partners with competent, professional staging service is crucial in today’s competitive housing market.