What Does Staging Your Home Mean? Two things sell residential real estate: PRICE & PRESENTATION. When you get ready to place your home on the market for sale it becomes a product. Similar to a product on the shelf at your local store, the product has features and benefits as well as pluses/minuses, and competition. To compete with the competition in the marketplace you must be priced right and look better than the other products. Your home is no different, it is one of many homes for sale and you must present it, to the buyers, in the best possible light. Why Home Staging? Home staging may be one of the hottest trends in real estate today. Advocates say that home sales for staged homes are often faster and at higher prices than similar un-staged homes.
What is Home Staging & How Can it Help You Sell Your Home? Staging is a process of cleaning, organizing, rearranging, updating, and preparing your home for sale. Sound good? Anyone who's ever had a home for sale, languishing on the market for weeks or even months, will probably be all for any process than can help avoid that situation in the future. At its most basic it may be as simple as performing some needed home repairs, pre-packing and removing unneeded items, accessories-such as personal effects, and bringing in some fresh flowers and plants. In other cases it might be as complicated as repainting, re-carpeting, rearranging furniture, or replacing outdated light fixtures or window treatments. But no matter how easy or complicated, the end result has only one goal: to show potential buyers the very best side of your home. After all, they'll be able to concentrate on picturing themselves in the home when they're not distracted by clutter, dirt, maintenance problems or the style choices of the seller. If you doubt that home staging can help sell a home faster, then consider this example.
	Picture yourself shopping for a new home. The first home you visit is a brand new model home. The color scheme is coordinated and the furniture has been arranged to show off the size of the rooms. Kitchens and bathrooms are polished to a high sparkle and are artfully accessorized. Clutter is amazingly absent. The closets are organized and the garage is neat and looks spacious. The next home you visit is only a year old and has a similar floor plan to the model you just saw. The owners, however, have moved from a larger home and their possessions are packed floor to ceiling in every closet, drawer, and shelf. The kitchen and bathroom haven't been scrubbed in days, and there's so much furniture in the dining room that you can hardly walk around the table. Several dead plants sit in the corner and the paint on the front door has been scratced incessently by the owner's large dogs. The garage is filled with toys, boxes, and holiday decorations and a car can't be parked inside.
Get the picture? You've probably guessed that in most cases the model home would sell ten times faster than the similar but cluttered competing home. The model has been "staged" to show buyers the features of the home, the spaciousness of the floorplan, and the ample supply of storage. "What most homeowners need to understand, is that the way a home should be presented for resale and the way you live in your home are two completely different things," offers Lori Matzke, Professional Home Stager and Founder of Center Stage Home. "Most of us don't actually live our lives like a page torn out of Metropolitan Home." According to Ms. Matzke, boxing up collections, freeing floors of throw rugs and area rugs, and editing a room's furnishings, can all attribute to making a home seem more spacious and airy. "Keep in mind that what you are selling is the house -- not its contents." "It's all about flow. The eye should move easily from well-lit room to room, reflecting on the best features of your home rather than on the possessions inside the home. You really have to completely detach yourself from your possessions and look at your home like you're seeing it for the first time." That's what potential buyers will be seeing. Less is more.