5 Stages to Selling Your Home: #3 Staging Your Home

You’ve found the right realtor to work with, you’ve decluttered your home and now it’s time to list your home.  The question is – what is home staging and do you need to do it?  

First, staging your home for sale is 100% optional!  At the very least you should have decluttered your home and made any minor repairs i.e., patching up holes or chipped paint, fixing anything minor that is currently broken.  That in itself could be enough.  

Staging your home is typically done by professionals whereby they replace much of your furniture, personal items and home décor with their own to make your home more appealing to buyers.  Staging your home may help in the following ways:

• Your home will look clean, modernized, organized and decluttered 
• Rooms may appear bigger
• Shows buyers how rooms may be utilized allowing them to envision how they may use the space 

Staging your home professionally is a marketing strategy that may increase buyer interest leading to a faster sale and possibly a higher price for your home.

What are the downsides to staging your home? 

1. Home staging does take time to plan, so if you are looking to sell your home quickly, professional staging may not be for you. 
2. The cost.  Staging your home is not free.  Depending on the size of your home and how much staging needs to be done costs could be anywhere from $1000 to over $10,000.  
3. You need to find an experienced stager.  If you’re lucky your realtor may have a home stager, they work with so you won’t need to shop around. 
4. You have to remove your furniture and store it somewhere else while your home is listed.

Staging your home is a personal choice and one that should be discussed with your realtor as every housing market is different.