Home staging is the art of designing and decorating your home in order to sell it quickly, to maximise its value or both. It’s increasingly popular and if you ask industry experts, they’ll tell you that good staging increases the number of viewings, decreases the amount of time a house will be on the market (by up to 50%), and push up the sale price by between 8% and 10%!
What does it involve?
Well, it usually involves an interior designer who will come to your house and redesign it to ensure that it looks neutral but stylish so that you can showcase it at its absolute best.
The process
There are usually a number of stages to successful home staging although every professional home stager will have their own unique process. To give you an idea of what’s involved, here are the basics:
- The first is for your home stager (whether that’s you or a professional) to research your market and identify your objectives. If you know what you want to achieve and what sort of buyer will be interested in your property you can start to plan accordingly.
- Next, there will inevitably be an element of decluttering and change. You may need help with this as what you see as important homely touches (such as family portraits hung down a wall) may not showcase your property at its best. It’s hard to be objective when it’s your home.
- You may also need to make some changes to the layout or how you have arranged things in order to improve your sales appeal.
- Next, the fun part. This means adding furniture, objects, and soft furnishings to enhance your property’s best bits (and maybe to flatter the worst bits.) These could be rugs, mirrors, cushions, flowers, or any number of other items, and if you’re using a professional home stager, they will probably be able to source or recommend what you need.
- Finally, with 90% of property searches starting online, your images need to really pop out. Again, your home stager can help with this, making sure your home is quite literally staged to look its best for the photoshoot.
Who is home staging for?
Anyone. Selling a property is about selling a lifestyle and property developers have been doing this with show homes for years. It’s now becoming more and more popular with private property owners.
Who does home staging?
A quick Google search should provide details of professional home stagers in your area. Some will be interior designers or some may specialise specifically in home staging for sale.
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