The secret is out! Staging is taking the real estate world by storm. It used to be that I only get called by the agents, now I get call by home sellers before they hire a real estate agent and they ask for my opinion on what to look for when I hire an agent. Home owners call me and ask for my opinions how I can stage their homes so they can be most open house ready. The sellers know they need to stage, but they don’t know why. Does every home need to be staged? Why should a home be staged? When is the best time to stage?
Staging, essentially, is packaging. It’s that red little bow that gets you excited at Christmas morning. You look the glistening shine of that red ribbon and you are tickled with joy because you know inside the box is something you have been waiting for. And the unknown potential of the gift excites you. Similarly, same goes with buying a home. Put yourself in the buyers shoes for a second. It’s exciting, you look at home after home until you wear your agent out. You are buying your dream home, you are buying a home that can make all your dreams come true and see them realized in– those walk in closets you have always wanted, the blue pool you want your kids to jump into during a hot summer day, and the green grassy lawns your future grandchildren will run on. Buyers want to pay the littlest money to buy the biggest, newest and prettiest house on the block and in the neighborhood. They want to have a house warming party where guests can’t stop gushing about how great their new home is and how jealous they are about your new dig. So… Where does staging come in from all of this? Staging bridges the gap by helping the buyers realizing the potential of their future dream home.
Say you go look at a starter home that has a tricky floor plan, where there is a really wide hallway in between the living room and the kitchen, but everything else is great and fine. Cute neighborhood, great lot, small backyard, just a good size for a young couple. But you don’t know what to do with this odd room. You will feel crazy cramped when you put a china cabinet there. It looks like a ridiculously large hallway but a tiny room that you can’t do anything with. The vacant space doesn’t speak to you. All you see are the dead flies in the corner of the room, every cracks on the wall, because there are nowhere else to look but down, literally. Your dream home is fading away and you quickly veto this house in your head. The rest of the home tour, you said no, no, and no. You, as a buyer, already put this home on the death sentence before you saw the rest.
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Apparently, A Good Stager Is the Buyers’ Biggest Enemy And We May Cost You $5645
Thursday, August 16th, 2007You can truly find anything on the internet. Today I found the report How to not get tricked by staging — and potentially save $5,645 when you buy your home (PDF; 1.23 MB) published by National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents.
The gist of the report is that staging is the enemy and a good buyer’s agent must steer the buyers away from staged homes, or teach them to look past all the tricks that stagers use to make the home look better than it really is. The National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents strongly feels that staging has become the media darling of real estate industry, with mainstream TV channels such as HGTV running its shows like Designed To Sell to convince people the power of staging. It also has been a dominant topic in the real estate trade magazines and other publications. All these have been campaigned in seller’s favor. So NAEBA feels that it must address the buyers’ needs by exposing what staging really is and how the buyers can consequently save money when they see past the staging.
In the report, NAEBA outlines “The dangers of home staging from your position as a home buyer.” NAEBA recommends that buyers remain cautionary about staged homes. In the real estate profession there are an abundance of stories of buyers seeing a staged home, becoming emotionally attached to it, and then paying over market value for the home. This is exactly what you want to avoid as a buyer. The emotional attachment can end up costing you thousands of dollars.
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