I Am Selling, So Why Put Money Into The House?
I would say this is the most frequently occurring questions professional stagers field every day! On the surface you can certainly understand why the question is raised repeatedly. There are many reasons to support the process of staging a property prior to bringing it to the public for review. Let’s look at a few of them.
Who is Buying?
Whether you know, or believe it, it is true; the buyer will determine IF your house will sell, when it will sell and for what price. You can have your hopes, wants and dreams but ultimately the power lies with the buyer. A great Staging professional is knowledgeable about which demographic is most likely to purchase your property and will make recommendations with that in mind. The largest property buying demographic today are Millennials. The younger members of this tribe may still favor renting, however once they hit their 30’s and begin to settle down they want their version of a great house.
What they want is move in ready. Why? Pressing student debt is already a worry, they scrape together as much as possible for the down payment and simply don’t have extra cashflow to invest in “fixing-up” the things you couldn’t be bothered to do. The other factor to consider is this group of people do not want to be “DIY weekend warriors”; they want to have fun on the weekends! Also, they don’t have the skills to do the work- and they are not interested in learning how to do it!
You may have finished with this property but to them it is their new home. They want it to look and feel like it from the outset. In fact, research shows they want the feel of new so much most of them are willing to pay more money to get it. What that means to you is this, if you choose to bring your property onto the market “as-is” you risk a) being on the market longer than you want or b) have offers for less than you expect.
Staging is the only service for selling property that has measurable value
Whether the market is hot, cold or indifferent, staging is a powerful marketing tool which should never be discounted because of the outlay of money. If you want to maximize your ROI, why would you not do for your house, what you would do if you were selling anything else! Your car for instance? Wouldn’t you clean, fix and polish it to make it feel new?
The largest investment most people ever make is in real estate. When selling, they want the most money possible in the shortest time for no effort and no money!?? Really who does that? 97% of prospective buyers look on the internet first, which means you need amazing photos to capture interest, to get on the MUST-SEE list. Don’t play equity jeopardy™ with your investment! Your competition are new houses- yours must look and feel like one too!
Failure to do so will have a millennial moving on.