How to get the most from your Home Staging contract
You've done your homework and decided to get your property staged. Good for you! You call me to do it. Good for me!
Now let's start working together to get it sold in a flash.
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You know your property. The good and the bad. If it's been on the market a while, and the feedback is that the bedrooms are small, tell me.
Empty bedrooms seldom reflect their true capacity. A photographer can shoot a small bedroom to look big, or a large bedroom to seem off puttingly huge. Buyers often find it difficult to judge what size bed can fit.
What size bed would you say can fit in here?*
I recently staged a lovely modern vacant townhouse. It had been on the market a while. The seller shared the feedback from buyers with me: the bedrooms were "too small".
They actually weren't. We staged all three bedrooms to show that they fitted a king, a queen and a double very comfortably. Mission accomplished.
Consider it an investment
90% of the time I stage the living and dining areas, the kitchen, the entrance, and the main bedroom and bathroom. Spaces like patios, entertainment rooms, home offices and additional bedrooms are optional. Obviously, there's a cost to staging these extra areas, and nobody wants to spend more than they have to. But if highlighting an area by staging it is going to make a sale, it's worth the investment. Whatever you spend on staging, you'll get back many times over when you achieve (close to) your asking price.
In the photos below, the seller was happy to spend a relatively small amount to stage the entertainment room. It really is the heart of the home, and needed to be shown off as a huge value add.
Get the photos up quickly
I can't tell you how often I look for the listing photos of a property I've staged and they're not up a week or even two weeks later. Guys! Get those photos online ASAP. Most of my staging contracts are for a month, so if the photos go online two weeks after staging, you're losing out big time.
I try to stage on a Wednesday, so that the agent can shoot photos on Thursday and put them online before the weekend. Weather can get in the way, but that's the aim.Make sure your agent has lined up the photographer for the day after staging to get the most out of your contract.
Good luck with selling your property!
* Answer: A king bed...
Contact Liesa from Home Stagers Cape Town to stage your property: +27 848432426.