Looking for a question that answers itself? Try this one: Does staging work to sell homes? Does freshness move the goods down at the green-grocer’s? Is there really anything to the idea of a ‘new-car smell’?
Delivering a house that is ready in every respect for its new residents definitely works, but it fell to Steve Jobs to show us why staging works: It expresses extreme respect for the buyer’s sagacity – and funding – by delivering a ‘new-in-box’ experience.
As with the iPhone App Store, the unboxing video is an emergent phenomenon, engendered not by Apple but by its customers. But the solemn unboxing of a new toy, very-carefully-boxed, has become a key part of the marketing strategy of new toys.
And new homes, too – big duh. There are no dirty clothes or toast crumbs cluttering up model homes – and they are serviced continuously and cleaned daily. If you’re looking for perfect staging, the ideal ‘new-in-box’ residence, they keep regular hours down at the new home subdivision.
But our job is to deliver that ‘new-in-box’ experience with resale homes in Sun City, many of which are themselves already of retirement age. For the right sum of cash, you can swap in a whole lot of ‘wow-factor’, all without turning your home into a born-yesterday dentist’s office. But with the right kind of staging you can put your best foot forward from wherever you start.
Like this:
1. Declutter. You cannot do this enough, and you will only have finished when you are busily cluttering up your new home. Put away, give away, throw away, rinse and repeat. If you already live in Sun City, good for you: Parks and Sons will haul away almost anything, as much as you can drag out, two days a week. Clutter makes the house hard to see, and it declares that the home is yours, not the buyer’s, where you need for them to see things the opposite way.
2. Deflair. The idea of flair comes from the movie ‘Office Space.’ Flair is the stuff in your home that makes it uniquely your own: Family photos, sports memorabilia, religious symbols, etc. It’s all moving with you, so pack it all up now. White Sox fans are expected to hate the Cubs, but we don’t want them hating you or your house. Nota bene: It is not a denial of your identity to take this stuff down. When you list your home for sale, it becomes an investment, a retail product, and your job as the seller is to remove as many impediments to the sale as you can. The sooner you pack up the flair, the sooner you can move.
3. Deep clean. Nothing sells houses like clean. If you have no budget for the listing, pay for deep cleaning in the kitchen and bathrooms, anyway. But, as you will have noted, we have substantially empty house to work from, by now. Skilled deep cleaners will unearth dirt you didn’t know you had – but which the buyer can always seem to find. When they are done, the house will seem to pop – the essence of that ‘new-in-box’ feeling.
4. Stage. Occupied? Make it work with what’s there. Vacant? Make something work. Everything’s a trade-off, and budgetary considerations loom, but recall that your model of perfection is the brand new model home. Given virtual staging, you can make do with ‘decorator staging’ – candles, towels, tchotchkes – on the property. When buyers have fallen in love with the ideal in the listing photos, a sparser reality on-site will not prove dismaying.
5. Photography. Yes, the fifth stage of staging happens after the staging is done. You can’t do anything in the way of retouching or virtual staging without photographs. But more importantly, perfect staging doesn’t last. People move things. They track in mud or bougainvillea petals. They reclutter – incessantly. The MLS listing is where the house will sell, if it is to sell high and fast. The objective of all this staging effort is to get the prefect listing photos that will sell the house as soon as it hits the market.
Don’t want to go to all that trouble? I do. We have people who can do everything that needs to be done – but it does need to be done. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll see me highlighting badly-sold homes, but the tragic part of the story comes when they sell – badly.
Does staging work? Only if you want your house to sell quickly and for top dollar…
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