As we approach the fall market, you might consider listing your home. Once you decide to sell your home, you must then decide whether staging your home may be beneficial to you in either selling your home faster or getting a higher priced offer.

Staging does two things for a home owner trying to sell a home. First, staging forces you to de-clutter and create a true level of clean that makes a home acceptable to the majority of prospective buyers. Second, staging helps to appeal to the broadest market by removing anything a prospect may find offensive or peculiar as well as arrange furniture to show off the home in the best way possible to those most likely to purchase. Both of these reasons for staging ultimately allow people to see the home rather than your stuff which will then help them make a buying decision. De-cluttering is easy to understand in that the more stuff you have laying around the more likely people are to be concerned about storage solutions in the home or not notice the beautiful granite you may have. Removing some of the personal items or offensive items also allows people to focus in on the home more. You may love your collection of 1960’s Pez dispensers or that controversial piece of art but prospective buyers may get turned off.

A stager also helps to adjust furniture layouts and paint schemes. As we live in our homes we make decorating decisions based on our current stage of life (living with babies, toddlers, teens or no kids at all) and what our favourite colours are at the time. I once went into a home that had 5 different colours of burgundy in the dining room. I had no idea what the homeowner was thinking but it made the home feel very disorganized. A stager would have come in and had the owner repaint with a more neutral tone allowing prospective purchasers to imagine their own colour and personality rather than be distracted by all the burgundy. An adjustment of furniture layout can also help make homes feel larger and better organized with better flow.

Many realtors are working with stagers now and offer that as part of their service to you as a home owner. If your realtor is not suggesting it you should ask them about the idea. If you are looking for some ideas you could speak with a couple stagers we use at MAC Marketing Solutions and TAC Real Estate including Design A Move and Dekora.

Dan Thomson