Benefits of Staging a Home for Sale

Many home sellers ask the question, "Should I bother staging my home for sale before listing the property?" The answer to this question is a resounding yes! And here's why:

Staging a home for sale will benefit a home seller in any type of market. In a buyer's market (where sellers are behind the curve from the get-go), you need every advantage you can get in order to sell the home for a decent price. This is one of many areas where home staging can help.

But what about if you're in a seller's market? Do you need to worry about staging the property like you would in a buyer's market? Of course you do. Regardless of what market you are in, the goal of home selling is to sell as quickly as possible and for the best price possible. These are both areas where it pays to stage your home for sale before listing it.

Benefits of Home Staging

Here's what else you get out of the process:

• Staging a home for sale can increase the likelihood of a sale. Professional stagers know that proper preparation, organization and presentation can give you an extra edge in selling any home.
• The staging process also forces you to de-clutter and organize the home. And this helps with the moving process overall, because you'll have to pack things away at some point anyway. So staging the home will give you a head start on packing!
  
• Staging your home requires you to think like a home buyer would. During the process, you will scrutinize the home as if you were buying it for the first time. Adopting this perspective early on will help you in many ways.
• Staging a home for sale helps reduce the length of time that the property is on the market. Anybody who has sold a home in the past will tell you that the less time the property is on the market, the better. This is even more true if you'll be paying two mortgages during the "overlap" period (if you buy a new home before selling the old one).
• Lastly, staging your home will help you justify the asking price you've set. This is especially important in a buyer's market, where you need everything in your favor to justify the asking price.
  

So there you have them, five good reasons why you should be staging your home for sale before showing it to buyers.

Definition of Home Staging - What Is It?

Our staging website offers a wealth of tips and advice to help you stage your home for sale. The end goal of the process is to sell the home faster and for the highest price possible.

When learning a new subject, however, it helps to start with the basics such as terminology. So I'd like to offer my own definition of home staging to help you better understand the subject:

Definition: Home staging is the process of preparing a home (and everything within the home) for sale, with a particular focus on presentation.

It's also worth noting that staging a home and preparing a home for the market are not always the same thing. For example, to prepare your home for potential buyers you might make small repairs where needed. Obviously this is an important step before listing the home for sale, but it doesn't really fall into the home staging category.

To stage a home for the market, you will be focusing on things of an aesthetic nature, such as the home's organization, design and general appearance (as opposed to functional or mechanical improvements).

Why stage a home in the first place? Because it has been proven, time and time again, to increase the likelihood of a sale. In other words, a home that undergoes expert staging will usually sell faster than a home that has not been properly staged for buyers.

Staging a home can also help you get the best price possible when selling the property, because buyers will be less likely to question your asking price.

Obviously, these are all good things. And that's why we have created an entire website to help sellers understand the concepts of expert home staging (and how to put those concepts into practice).

The goal of home staging then is to improve the home's appearance in the eyes of potential buyers, with the ultimate goal of selling the home more quickly and for the highest possible price. It can make the difference between an "okay" house and a "wow' house.

That's the definition of home staging.