Professional Home Staging

How you live in your home and how you market your home are likely two different scenarios. You may use the corner of the kitchen as a home office, but cramming your office equipment into a nook alongside a microwave and kitchen table isn’t the most appealing use of space from a home marketing point of view. Hiring a professional home stager in either a consulting capacity or to actually stage your home can help maximize its showing potential.

Your Realtor will know whether your home is a good candidate for the design service and whether market conditions are such that staging your home would be beneficial.

While design specialists can be costly, hiring a professional home staging consultant doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot of cash. Many consultants charge a flat fee of a few hundred dollars and in return will provide you with advice that can help you maximize your home’s showing potential. Their advice can include a detailed breakdown of your home’s positive qualities and trouble spots – from curb appeal to a room-by-room evaluation – and provide advice about how to minimize clutter, get organized, accentuate complimentary lighting, and where to hang some strategically placed mirrors. The consultant also may point out any repairs or problems that should be remedied before the house goes on the market.

The professional home stager takes marketing your home to higher level and will cover the same territory as the consultant but also detail for you which furnishings and other items must be removed and how to best display the furnishings and items that remain. It’s the stager’s job to make small rooms look larger and dim rooms look brighter, and you can leave it to professionals to rearrange your belongings so that they best compliment your home’s positive features and minimize its poorer qualities. Some home stagers will provide furnishings and others may use only what’s already in the house.

Here are some guidelines to help you determine whether you would benefit from a consultation or full-blown staging:

• Determine whether you simply need help organizing and reducing clutter or if you’d benefit from all that home stagers have to offer.
• A vacant home can be a good candidate for home staging because a furnished home simply shows better than one that is unoccupied. Empty homes tend to look smaller than those that are furnished.
• A small home or property that has an unconventional floor plan can benefit from a professional interior design specialist who can maximize the property’s unique features.
• Market conditions can also dictate whether staging is the right choice for you. If the market is hot and houses are selling quickly, it’s likely that you wouldn’t need the assistance of a professional home stager. In a buyer’s market, however, it may be in your best interest to pull out all the stops and beautify your property to the best of your abilities.
• Your property’s overall condition also is important. If you’re selling a fixer-upper that needs a lot of structural repairs or other significant repairs, maximizing the home’s flow from room to room and strategically positioning its furnishings is probably a waste of effort and money.