The thought of buying a home that is truly move-in ready would be a natural fit for today’s home buyers. Our staging company is willing to sell everything they use to decorate our listings!
Developers frequently stage properties, giving potential buyers insight into what living there might actually be like. But these days, the trend is toward selling residences fully furnished, right down to the Frette sheets and Lavazza espresso maker. For well-heeled clients, these “instant homes” offer the ultimate in convenience, with the added caché of a big-name designer.
A home should be a visual expression of the person who lives there, right? While this may be true most of the time, the advice could change when it comes to selling your house. According to a new study by Zillow, certain paint colors can make your house sell for more—and some hues can even have the opposite effect. “People don’t buy homes every day, so they’re trying to quickly process a lot of complex information in an area where they don’t have a lot of experience,” Amanda Pendleton, Zillow’s home-trend expert, explained in a statement. “That uncertainty is likely why buyers rely on color as a powerful visual signal that a home is modern and up-to-date, or tired and needs maintenance.”
“Buyers have been exposed to dark gray spaces through home improvement TV shows and their social media feeds,” Mehnaz Khan a color psychology specialist and interior designer in Albany, New York, said in a statement. However, the reason gray paint colors can make your home sell for more might also have to do with more subconscious reasons. “Gray is the color of retreat,” Khan added. “As we come out of the pandemic and return to our hectic lives, buyers want home to be a refuge. They want to withdraw and escape from the uncertainty of the outside world, and rooms enveloped in dark gray can create that feeling of security.”
Staging makes it easier for buyers to visualize the property as their future home, both online and in person. We are able to blend staging with your existing furniture too, so you don’t have to empty out your house….unless you want to!
Here is a link to the NAR 2023 Profile of Home Staging:
Every year, there are new and evolving home design fads that should “scare” you to death. Last year, there were moss-covered accent walls (gasp!), acrylic furniture (shriek!) and Tuscan-style kitchens (yelp!). This year, it’s the “cloffice”—a pandemic-era closet-turned-office—and many others.
With Halloween around the corner, Styled Staged & Sold presents its annual countdown of the top 10 home trends of 2022 that are haunting our nightmares:
It can’t be said strongly enough how important the visual impact is to selling houses in the Frenzy of 2022.
The action is so fast, and with major life-changing decisions being made in minutes, that it is smart for sellers to take advantage and maximize the appeal before going on the open market. You have to sell the buyers online, then again when they arrive in person, and then clinch it when they go home and look at it again online. Photos AND videos are the ideal answer!
Here are the before-and-after photos of our latest listing:
If you are thinking of selling, consider that the combining our tune-ups with my open-bidding process is the best way to ensure a top-dollar sale! Let’s discuss it! Call or text me today at 858-997-3801.
Location is everything! Enjoy this end-of-culdesac gem that is just steps from Torrey Pines High School (so close you won’t need to buy your kid a car!) and an easy stroll to Del Mar Highlands & One Paseo! Totally renovated with newer kitchen & baths, Pella Pro-line designer wood windows, new paint & carpet, new light fixtures, and new landscaping! No rentback needed at closing either – just bring your toothbrush and move right in! Wow!
I’ll be there 12-3pm this weekend for open house – stop on by!
P.S. This is my 10,000th blog post!
The consumers’ fascination with the zestimates has never been greater! With home prices detached from comps, the zestimate is the only other measuring stick for both buyers or sellers – right or wrong!
Buyers need to be sold twice – online and in-person. Staging helps with both!
La Jolla Realtor Michelle Silverman can easily tick off the various homes she’s sold for which she got more and higher offers because of effective staging.
“There was one home that hadn’t been staged and was listed at $1.149 million. It was old. It was tired looking,” she said. “I took the listing and had it staged. We got 12 offers on it and ended up selling it for just a little over $1.15 million. So, maybe it was just a little higher, but the buyer said they were only going to get $900,000 for the house.”
According to a 2020 survey of 13,000 staged homes by the Real Estate Staging Association noted that staged homes sell faster, averaging just 23 days on the market. By comparison, the typical U.S. home spent 43 days on the market last month, according to a report from Realtor.com.
The staging association survey also showed that with an average investment of 1 percent, approximately 75 percent of sellers saw a return on investment of 5% to 15% over asking price.
And this was before the market got as heated as it is now.
So, you might ask, if we’re in a seller’s market, why bother staging a home? Why not save the expense?
Silverman’s response was quick.
“Because even in a seller’s market, buyers are not visionary.”
Staging and professional photos create the best first impression of a home, which helps to pre-sell the buyer. It makes them want to get there faster to confirm they’ve found the right house for them. How much does staging add to the price? Hard to put a specific number on it, but you should have more offers faster. What drives the eventual price in this market is how the listing agent handles multiple offers.
WASHINGTON (April 6, 2021) – A new survey from the National Association of Realtors® reveals that home staging continues to be a significant part of the home buying and selling process.
The biennial report, the 2021 Profile of Home Staging, examines the elements of home staging, including the perspectives of both buyers’ and sellers’ agents, the role of television programing and the expectations of buyers.
“Staging a home helps consumers see the full potential of a given space or property,” said Jessica Lautz, NAR’s vice president of demographics and behavioral insights. “It features the home in its best light and helps would-be buyers envision its various possibilities.”
Buyers’ agents overwhelmingly agreed, as 82% said staging a home made it easier for a buyer to visualize the property as a future home.
These agents also said that visuals themselves are helpful, even more so in relation to buying a house during the coronavirus outbreak. Eighty-three percent of buyers’ agents said having photographs for their listings was more important since the beginning of the pandemic. Seventy-four percent of buyers’ agents said the same about videos, and 73% said having virtual tours available for their listings was more important in the wake of COVID-19.
“At the start of the pandemic, in-person open house tours either diminished or were halted altogether, so buyers had to rely on photos and virtual tours in search of their dream home,” said Lautz. “These features become even more important as housing inventory is limited and buyers need to plan their in-person tours strategically.”
Staging also increased the sum buyers were willing to spend for a property, according to the report. Twenty-three percent of buyers’ agents said that home staging raised the dollar value offered between 1% and 5%, compared to similar homes on the market that hadn’t been staged.
Coincidently, the response from sellers’ agents was nearly identical, as 23% reported a 1% to 5% price increase on offers for staged homes.
Eighteen percent of sellers’ agents said home staging increased the dollar value of a residence between 6% and 10%. None of the agents for sellers reported that home staging had a negative impact on the property’s dollar value.
Moreover, 31% said that home staging greatly decreased the amount of time a home spent on the market.
Exactly which parts of a home to stage vary, although living rooms (90%) and kitchens (80%) proved to be the most common, followed closely by master bedrooms (78%) and dining rooms (69%). As many workers were forced to work from home due to the pandemic, 39% staged a home office or office space.
Television programing played a noticeable role in how buyers viewed a potential property, according to Realtors®. Agents surveyed said that typically 10% of buyers believed homes should look the way they appear on TV shows. Sixty-three percent said buyers requested their home look like homes staged on television. Sixty-eight percent of Realtors® reported that buyers were disappointed by how homes appeared compared to those seen on TV shows.
In some cases, agents found that TV shows could influence a buyer’s perspective about a home. Seventy-one percent of respondents said that TV shows that depict the buying process impacted their business by setting unrealistic or increased expectations. Sixty-one percent said that TV programs set higher expectations of how homes should look, while 27% said that TV shows result in more educated home buyers and sellers.
“The magic of television can make a home transformation look like it happened in a quick 60-minute timeframe, which is an unrealistic standard,” said NAR President Charlie Oppler, a Realtor® from Franklin Lakes, N.J., and broker/owner of Prominent Properties Sotheby’s International Realty. “I would advise buyers and sellers alike that before house hunting or before listing, they connect with a trusted Realtor® to get a reasonable sense of what’s out there and an idea of what to expect.”
Eight-one percent of those surveyed said buyers had ideas about where they wanted to live and what they wanted in an ideal home (76%) before they began the buying process.
Forty-five percent of surveyed Realtors® said they have seen no change in the share of buyers who planned to flip a home in the last five years, while 42% said they had.
Also, 59% said they have seen an increase in the buyers who planned to remodel a home in the last five years, while 34% said they have seen no change. Agents surveyed said that typically 25% of buyers who plan to remodel will do so within the first three months of owning their home.
