First off, I’m a huge believer in staging and use it in all my listings. After experiencing the difference first hand, selling an expired listing that was on the market for 5 months in just 1 week, I knew that if you are selling a house you need to have it staged. With that said I incorporated it into my listings and provide the service free to my listing clients. I invested in a storage locker and took staging courses and trained to learn the art of staging. If you are considering selling you need to read this article about staging.

When a house goes on the market homeowners and realtors do everthing they can to ensure the property looks its best. But it takes more than a colorful throw and pillow to disguise a saggy old sofa, or any other flaws the home might have. That’s where a good stager comes in. Stagers are professionals who come into homes or apartments for sale and style them with furniture, artwork, and other decor items to maximize the property’s appeal to potential buyers. More than just redecorating, staging appeals to the psycohology of the buyers by helping them see the property as their home, as opposed to someone else’s.

While staging services used to be the sole domain of those with multi-million dollar mansions to sell it is now affordable for homeowners across the spectrum.

Staging is an investment that not only helps sellers get top dollar for their property, but can cut the time a house spends on the market in half. Currently the average number of days a house in Santa Clara County is on the market is 120 days, my staged homes are selling within a month.

There are four objectives of staging a home.

DEPERSONALIZE

It’s a misconception that ta wall full o ffamily portraits will create warmth. Its so important to deperonalize the home. When you walk into a model home, you don’t feel like you’re in someone else’s space. That’s an uncomfortable feeling, that you’re invading someones space and looking at their persoanl things – persons photos, personal collections, and kind of personal items in a bathroom, trash cans. Anything that says ’someone lives here’ with a big red flag, like toilet bowl brushes or bath mats on the floor, we put away prior to showing the house.

REVITALIZE

My goal when staging a house is to create a very warm, inviting and updated space and environment, so the home doesn’t feel like someone has lived there or for 30 years and feels old and dreary. I want it to feel bright, fresh, and clean, ready for someone to move into immeadiately.

VISUALIZE

A lot of homes have unusual floor plans so when I come in, it’s my challenge to make the home make sense to a buyer. Where does it make sense to sit and watch TV, where are the kids going to do their homewor? I consider these factors when I’m planning the staging and the furnishings.

FUNCTIONALIZE

For me it’s not just about putting furniture in the house and making it look beautiful, it’s really about making the space functional for the buyer, and makeing the best use of it for the way we live today not 30 years ago. The buyer may never live the way I staged the home, but it makes sense when they walk in and it appeals to them.