What is Home Staging and How Does It Work?

 A potential buyer has three things in mind when looking at a house – the location, the condition, and the cost. Since you can’t do anything about the location and you want to get a good price on your house, the only thing you can do to make your house more sale-worthy is to improve the condition – i.e., make your house look more attractive.

What is Home Staging?

Home staging basically means sprucing your house up to make it more attractive to a potential buyer. It means making your house look bigger, brighter, airy, cleaner ane most of all exude warmth and charm, which makes someone want to buy it.

Why is it important?

Plenty of potential buyers seem to feel that an empty house is soulless, and this might keep your house on the market for a long time.

Besides, if the house is empty, a buyer has a hard time figuring out its true potential. The buyer will judge the home only by virtue of the location and the square feet area.

Also, if there are defects in the house – plumbing, construction, roofing or otherwise, the new owner will have to pay for these repairs out of their own pocket, and nobody would be willing to do that. 

And finally, efficient home staging lets you add an X factor to your house, be it a certain interior design theme, the furniture or your choice of art. Every house exudes a feeling, and this can be your oppurtunity to turn your ordinary house into something much more.

What are the different types of home stagers available, and what’s the cost?

1. Vacant Staging

Now, if you are selling off your house, you will most likely take your furniture with you. Thus your home will become vacant. 

If you hire a home stager at this point, he will have rent out furniture and appliances to accessorize your houses. He will get all the furniture delivered himself, through his contacts and he will set it up himself as well.

A home stager will have a good idea of how to set up the furniture and appliances in a way that it looks most appealing. However, there are other costs involved – renting and transportation of furniture, installing, and setting up. Depending on the number of square feet in your house, expect this to cost about $2000 to $9000.

2. Occupied Staging

If you want to sell your house ‘as-is,’ along with the furniture, the home stager will cost much less, about $500 to $5000. Of course, the home stager might want to bring over some furniture or accessories of his own, so costs can vary.

What Are The Steps Involved In Home Staging?

Cleaning and Repairing 

The first step involves an exhaustive cleaning and repairing – maintenance work. This includes:-

1. Making repairs in appliances and furniture.
2. Decluttering the house.
3. Paint jobs to cover cracks in the wall or dried and flaking paint.
4. Pressure washing the gutters, garage, driveway, and walkway. 

Exterior Home Staging

You have to make the house look more attractive from the outside or in other words, enhance the ‘curb appeal’ of the home.

The best way to do this is to imagine your house in the center of a photograph. Make sure the house is as pretty and as visible as the subject in the picture. Simple steps include:

• Trimming the hedges, trees, grass, and weeds uniformly to increase visibility. Keep the yard neatly mowed and clean.
• Experts recommend a two or three-color mix on the exterior of the house, not more.
• If the lawn is dead, you can spray paint the lawn green. You can also plant some artificial flowers, trees, and shrubs.
• Put in a grill and some lawn chairs outside near the deck or the pool. 

Interior Home Staging

Like we said before, it’s all about making the house as welcoming as possible – you want it to be neat, clean, airy, and appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of the buyers. 

This is a long and complicated process. However, the basic steps are these:- 

• Get attractive furniture and arrange them in specific groups and vignettes. You can rent the furniture yourself.
• Show off a lot of soft and elegant fabrics like silk, satin, and lambswool.
• Add interesting elements to shelving, bookcases and fireplace mantels.
• Revamp the lighting system of the house to make the whole house brighter and avoid dark corners.
• Add visually pleasing elements to each room, such as lamps, mirrors, plants, silk flowers, candles, baskets, etc.
• Make the floors more pleasant by putting in area rugs and carpets. 
• Add in ottomans, cushions, coffee tables and large bowls of polished fruits or colorful books in the living room.
• Putting in fresh towels, moisturizers, air fresheners, scented soaps, and in the bathroom.

Conclusion

There you have it. Hiring a home stager isn’t necessary if your house is in a great locale or it has amazing architecture. If you wish to sell off the furniture too, you can do it all yourself.

However, if your house will be vacant and you want to get the best value for it, we strongly recommend getting a home stager.