Staging your Home, The Basics

It’s already a given: staging open house events is one of the most important activities you, as a home seller, will have to undertake. You can’t forego an open house because, how else will the buyers find out if the house really is as good as it appeared on the printed advertisements and, possibly even, word of mouth? Having an open home is the only way you can get buyers to realize that the house is good on the inside as it is on the outside.

The key to a successful open house event is proper staging. When you stage your house, you try to depersonalize the property and arrange the furniture and accessories in such a way that these would bring out the best in each room. When you stage, you want to highlight the assets, and downplay the “defects”.

What would you do then if, after you’ve cleaned the exterior and interior structure of your house, you realize that your furniture pieces are mucked up? It does happen – especially if your house once sheltered three rambunctious boys who grew up, got married and had three equally rambunctious (yet adorable) boys, EACH – so don’t beat yourself up because of that.

If you badly need to host an open home event and your furniture pieces simply cannot do then hire the services of professional stagers. Professional stagers are firms which specialize in prepping up interiors specifically for open home events.

When you hire the services of Professional stagers, the first step would be for an in-house designer or decorator to visit your house to see what exactly your house needs (and what kind of furniture pieces it can accommodate). They will discuss the options with you and once you’ve settled everything (yes, including the price), a big van carrying all the items you need for your open home (from bulky furniture pieces such as three-piece sofas and dining sets; to small, seemingly insignificant accessories such as flower vases and wall hangings) will arrive. The stagers will remove your furniture and replace these with the newer pieces. They will set everything up and your reinvented interiors will be ready to receive visitors when the open weekend arrives.

A word of caution though - don’t get too attached to the nice furniture pieces. These are only there for the duration of the open house and are on loan. After the open house, the stagers will haul everything away again.

Although professional stagers can help spruce up your interiors, no one has made an in depth study as to how successful they are in jacking up prices of homes, or how they aid in securing a sale. Their services are something you have the option to consider. If you have extra money you can allocate for them then by all means, get them to help you out. But if you’re on a very tight budget forego the stagers. Just make do with what you have or borrow from friends and relatives. Hope that, just like love, your buyers would see beyond the outdated furniture and see the true value of your property.

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