Home staging has become an important part of the home selling process. Even in a hot housing market, there are many benefits you’ll gain from staging your home for sale. If you’re a new seller, you might wonder what staging means and why it’s important. In this article, we will discuss the top benefits of staging a home for sale to help you understand why it’s worth the investment.
What Is Home Staging?
Home staging is the process of preparing a property for sale by making it appealing to the widest range of prospective buyers. Staging a home goes beyond adding furniture, redecorating the space, and decluttering. It also involves making minor home repairs and upgrades, eliminating distractions, sprucing up exterior spaces, and depersonalizing the space. It’s possible to stage a home yourself, but it’s a good idea to hire a professional home staging company to help you out.
Below are the top benefits of home staging.
- Faster Sale
According to statistics released by the National Association of Realtors, home staging helps you sell the property faster. The survey compared the number of days staged and unstaged homes stayed on the market and found that staged homes sold 73% faster. It took an average of 156 days for unstaged homes to sell while staged homes took an average of 42 days.
The concept of home staging is to highlight a property’s best features, depersonalize the home, and eliminate distractions so as to appeal to the widest range of buyers. By appealing to the largest number of buyers, the seller is able to get more offers, which translates to a faster sale. With so much competition in the real estate market, your home can easily get lost in the sea of listings on the internet. It’s important to go the extra mile to make your property stand out from the crowd. If you’re selling your home and struggling to get offers, it might be time to stage your home and turn things around. Even though you may spend an average of $3,000 on staging your home, the investment is more than worth it.
- Get Higher Offers
Staging not only helps you sell your home faster, you could end up fetching a higher price. According to data from the National Association of Realtors and Professional Staging, staging a home for sale could increase the sale price by an average of 1% to 10%. Another survey by the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA) shows that an average investment of 1% of the sale price into home staging can easily translate to a return on investment of 5% to 15% over the asking price.
Everything from bringing in furniture to decorating the space and making minor home upgrades makes a home appear more luxurious and inviting. As a natural consequence, this improves the value of the house. If your home has been sitting on the market for months, you might want to stage the property. You do not want to find yourself sitting on a stale listing because it will only become harder to sell the home if the property stays on the market for too long.
- Increase the Value of a Home
Professional home staging won’t just help buyers imagine themselves living in the home; it can also help increase the value of a home. According to data from the National Association of Realtors, 17 percent of sellers’ agents stated that staging a home increased the dollar value of the home by 6 % — 10%. Therefore, it’s evident that staging your home is worth the effort.
Sell Your Home Fast With Less Hassle
There’s no doubt about it: home staging improves your odds of a successful sale. If done correctly, it will create an emotional appeal for buyers, play up its strengths, and hide its flaws. If you’re planning to list your home for sale, consider investing in staging the home; and you won’t regret it.
Should You Work With a Professional Home Staging Company
It’s advisable to hire professional stagers to help you stage your home. While you may be tempted to stage your home yourself in order to save money, there are many things you might miss and jeopardize your chances of making a good sale. A home staging company that has been in the market for a number of years can offer valuable advice. With their expertise, they know what works and what doesn’t, they know the ins and outs of the market, and they have connections in the real estate industry. Moreover, a professional home stager will give you an unbiased opinion about a property, making it easy to depersonalize. Having never lived in the home, a stager won’t have the same emotional attachment to your home. Be sure to consult with a professional home staging company before you list your home.