If you have sold your home or are thinking of selling, you’ve most likely heard of home staging. It’s a service that optimizes a home to go on the market and make the best impression on potential buyers. When a prospective buyer walks into a home, they size it up in the first 7-10 seconds of entering – an incredibly small timeframe in which the seller has to impress (Royal LePage). Staging can cost anywhere from $3,000-$10,000 depending on the size of the home, causing many sellers to question whether it’s truly worth the investment. At Heaps Estrin, we view it as an investment which provides an immense return – and that return is typically tax-free income. If you could invest $5,000 with your banker and make over $50,000, you would do so every day of the week. In our opinion, staging is a no brainer for many homes.
The reason why we so strongly recommend staging to our clients? It falls under a little something we like to call real estate psychology. If you want to sell quicker, the home should be presented in a way that invites people to make their own statement.
Our staging team aims to make the prospective buyer feel as though they are stepping into the perfect canvas for their family to create endless memories in their new home.
Recently we took staging to a whole new level when we partnered with BMW Canada and launched the ‘Stage Your Driveway’ program, as seen in Forbes and AdAge. Research shows that the purchase of a home and new car usually occurs in tandem. We staged three of our luxury listings with three high end BMW cars, using models which matched a similar demographic of the potential home buyer. For our more family friendly homes we used a SUV BMW X7, whereas our ultra-modern listing sported a sleek i8, really trying to depict a lifestyle rather than just focusing on selling the home itself. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and all three properties sold within days of hitting the market.
With staging being a process that many people are aware of, however have never personally invested in themselves, there tends to be many misconceptions. These are the three most common misconceptions we’ve seen regarding home staging:
1) Staging is only for the interior of the house.
At Heaps Estrin, we think about the first impression the potential buyer will receive from the moment they pull up to the house. It’s imperative to de-clutter by removing trash cans and any extra accessories that don’t need to be present. Another thing we suggest is to have your front lawn landscaped, the grass cut, and the windows cleaned if necessary; our agents work with you to assess exactly what needs to be and can project manage the entire process with the help of our trusted tradespeople.
2) Buyers have to understand that if they want to stretch their budget, they’ll need to do some renovations, painting and cleaning to fix up the place before move-in.
For every flaw, Buyers are thinking how they should adjust their offer, and whether they’re going to need to fix the flaw before or during move-in. The truth is they would much rather not do the fixer-upper work. Give your home a face-lift: This can include replacing old appliances, freshening up a space that the owner has only used for storage, but can be a great addition to a perspective buyer, investing in landscaping the backyard, adding a fresh coat of paint, etc. When you work with Heaps Estrin, we use our expertise to tell you what exactly you need to put in, in order to get achieve a certain result when your home hits the market.
3) Home staging and home decorating are basically the same thing. If you’ve had your home professionally decorated, you don’t need to stage it as well.
When you’re staging, you’re showing the property in its best light, the best showcase of its bones. A lot of times that entails removing the residents personal stamp. At Heaps Estrin, we work with an incredible staging team who transform overly-personalized spaces into modern, stylized and elegant homes. The main goal of staging is for the prospective buyer to envision themselves living in the home, this includes decorating in neutral colours and removing your family photos and personal items to present the space as a clean canvas. Check out the before and afters from one of our listings below.
We hope we have painted a clearer picture for you regarding the staging process. To speak to one of our agents for more information on how we work with our clients in order to deliver exceptional results please contact us at info@heapsestrin.com.
