Decluttering before selling a home is smart. Sometimes home stagers have to correct over-decluttering.
Preferred Staging Quoted on Redfin.com
We are happy and honored to have founder Monica Murphy quoted in Redfin’s latest online article, “Home Staging Tips: Sell Your Home Quickly”.
With over 13 years of experience and awards, there’s a reason why Preferred Staging sets the home staging standard. Give Monica a call today to discuss how we can Elevate Your Real Estate!
Read the full article here: https://www.redfin.com/blog/home-staging-tips-sell-your-home-quickly/
Is Staging a Home In Washington DC Worth It?
Springfield Virginia Townhome Transformed with Home Staging
7707 Rockledge Court in Springfield, Virginia is was a showcase town home before it was staged. However, with such an open floor plan, buyers were not sure how they would use the space and understand the true scale of this deceptively large home.
7707 Rockledge Court in Springfield, Virginia is was a showcase town home before it was staged. However, with such an open floor plan, buyers were not sure how they would use the space and understand the true scale of this deceptively large home.
The open flow of the property required a cohesive design. We chose complimentary furnishings and wall art in light tones to keep the airy feel. To provide continuity and texture, we augmented with reds throughout. This tied the home together in a unifying theme.
If you are considering selling your home in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland and wish to use home staging, sign up for our newsletter and receive a complimentary home preparation guide. Both the newsletter and the guide will direct you in the best preparation projects to ready your home for sale.
If you are interested in learning more about home staging in Northern Virginia go to our home page and browse around..
If you are considering selling your home in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland and wish to use home staging, sign up for our newsletter and receive a complimentary home preparation guide. Both the newsletter and the guide will direct you in the best preparation projects to ready your home for sale.
Preparing Your Washington DC Home For Sale: Common Knowledge Is Only Part of It
Common knowledge has it that cleaning and decluttering your home prior to putting it on the market is a wise investment. However, home sellers in Northern Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC who want to get the absolute most for their home will go a step beyond cleaning and decluttering…they will stage their home.
Why stage? Because statistics show that a well-staged home sells for significantly more money than an unstaged home. In fact, several independent sources put the value of staging a home at 5% or more of the home’s value. Doing the math, that means that for every $100,000 of your home’s value, you may earn another $5,000 when you sell by staging.
If your home is worth $200,000, then we are talking an extra $10,000 in your pocket after the sale. If your home is worth $300,000, then your return will be around $15,000. You get the idea. Staging pays off in a big way!
These numbers are just from the increase in sales value of a staged home. But these same studies also show that staged homes sell faster. To understand the total return on a home that has been well staged, we need to include the amount of time a staged home stays on the market, relative to an unstaged home.
In my practice, our staged homes in the Washington DC metro area typically sell in about a one-third of the time of other homes on the market. That means, if homes typically stay on the market for 60 days in your area, a staged home might be expected to sell in just 20 days. That saves you months of extra mortgage payments, taxes and utility bills. These are collectively referred to as “carrying costs.” A good estimate for carrying costs avoided due to a faster sale is about 1% - 2% of your home’s value.
Our own home staging statistics for the Washington DC market confirm these independent studies.
Lastly, the longer a home sits on the market, the more likely it is to experience a price reduction. Reductions in the list price of a home typically range from 5% - 10% of the original asking price. If a staged home sells faster, there is usually no need for a reduction in asking price.
So, staging your home returns dollars to you in the following ways:
· Increases the attractiveness of the home, resulting in a higher sales price
· Sells the home quickly, avoiding carrying costs
· A home that sells quickly is far less likely to require a price reduction to entice a buyer
The good news is that it is never too late to begin. Even if your home is already on the market, you can make simple changes that will dramatically improve your home’s market potential. If you have more time, then more can be done. No matter what your situation, this book will help you identify where to start and what to do.
If you are interested in learning more about home staging in Washington DC go to our home page and browse around..
If you are considering selling your home in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland and wish to use home staging, sign up for our newsletter and receive a complimentary home preparation guide. Both the newsletter and the guide will direct you in the best preparation projects to ready your home for sale.
Rowhouse in Washington DC Staged with Warmth and Tradition
Staging homes in Washington, DC requires flexibility to go contemporary on one job and warm and traditional in the next. This home begged for a warm presentation. With occasional exposed brick and wood beams, we needed to bring out the character of the property without making it feel like you were down on the farm.
Other aspects of the home reflected a colonial feel and required a more modern touch so the home kept a transitional feel. The living and dining areas afforded a more elegant execution and brought out the quality of the construction and attention to detail.
The bedroom was painted a beautiful blue-gray. This is far from a neutral color, but we were able to neutralize the room with light bedding, headboard and a reading chair. The light gray area rug provides continuity from top to bottom.
If you are interested in learning more about home staging row houses in Washington DC go to our home page and browse around..
If you are considering selling your home in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland and wish to use home staging, sign up for our newsletter and receive a complimentary home preparation guide. Both the newsletter and the guide will direct you in the best preparation projects to ready your home for sale.
Arlington Virginia Home Staged and Sold for $45,000 Over Asking!
Preferred Staging staged1701 N Kenilworth Street, Arlington, VA. The listing received 6 offers in 5 days. The owner ultimately accepted an offer for $45,000 over asking.
This is one of many projects Preferred Staging has done on this street with Meg with similarly strong results. Go Team!
Staged Ashburn, VA Home Sold in Less Than 20 Minutes? Seriously!
Absolutely true story.
One of our Realtor partners was getting a townhome-style condo in Ashburn, Virginia ready to go on the market in an area where there was stagnant inventory with all over the board prices, and a seller that needed to sell quickly and for top dollar. Preferred Stager Susan Reynolds was hired to do the staging.
Susan put together and executed a perfect design plan, and along with good marketing including a "coming soon" teaser, the house had a solid offer for top dollar less than 20 minutes after the condo went active. The Realtor credits Preferred Staging with a large part of the success of the quick sale for the seller.
But think about this...First, the Realtor wouldn't have been able to create that "coming soon" teaser if the staging hadn't created an upbeat and on-trend presentation of the entire home.
Second, the teaser in turn generated real interest and was watched by potential buyers.
Finally, as soon as the listing went active, an offer was made. The buyer commented that this condo was exactly what they were looking for, and they moved quickly for fear that someone else would beat them to it.
This is just another example, albeit not quite typical, of what a professional staging can do for you.
If you are considering selling your home in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland and wish to use home staging, sign up for our newsletter and receive a complimentary home preparation guide. Both the newsletter and the guide will direct you in the best preparation projects to ready your home for sale.
If you are interested in learning more about home staging in Ashburn Virginia go to our home page and browse around.
Budget Home Staging is a Mistake in the Washington DC Metro Region
For the fourth year in a row, Preferred Staging has compiled home staging statistics for the Washington DC, suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia market. What initially surprised us has now become a common theme - budget staging actually hurts a home's value.
And how is the value hurt? Poor stagings neither show nor photograph well, and are often confusing or distracting to buyers. These homes will most likely sit on the market for longer and endure multiple price drops - all of which devalue the property and cost the home owner money in continued maintenance as well as lost revenue from the sale.
We were initially surprised by our findings because one of home staging's effects is to give home buyers an idea as to what the room could be used for. In theory, you don't need to completely furnish a room to define it. But in practice, a partially staged or under-staged room leaves buyers feeling confused and distracted. Staging with vignettes or cutting corners by not using end tables and lamps and not hanging art on the wall can leave the impression that the room is not complete, that it lacks a sense of purpose and doesn't really show how a buyer can best live in that space. Worse yet is when a partially staged room looks like the buyer simply left behind their throw-away furniture.
The bigger problem surfaces with the listing photos. Almost 100% of all new home searches start online, and sellers have only about 30 seconds to impress today's tech savvy buyers before they'll simply click to the next listing. When listing photos show a partially staged or disjointed room, they're not going to be enticed to want to go and see that house.
We all know that buying a house is as much psychological as it is emotional and rational, and we understand that buyers are subconsciously passing judgment and creating a narrative not just about the house but the sellers as well. You want that narrative to be a positive one.
What narrative would these photos generate in the minds of potential buyers? These are all photos of "staged" houses.
So what's a budget staging? As demonstrated by the photos above, a budget staging uses smaller furniture and fewer pieces, and much fewer accessories, often not using rugs, lamps and art. They also stage fewer rooms and sometimes leave major rooms vacant. Because there is less inventory, less labor is involved so the overall price is lower than that of a professional stager. But as you can see from the above examples, budget staging does not add any value to the home.
Using smaller pieces of furniture does not make a room look bigger and in fact the opposite is true - the room looks smaller. Staging only one or two rooms on the main level presents a disjointed house.
Another trick that budget stagers use are composite beds, which are a liability. A composite bed is usually composed of things that a real bed isn't - buckets or bins are the base. There is no real bed frame or box spring, and usually no headboard. It may look good, but if you sit or lean against it, it will fall apart and a buyer could land on the floor and possibly injure themselves. It's also a distraction - to protect themselves, a sign has to be put on the bed along the lines of "For Display Purposes Only - Do Not Sit". Buyers are going to be intrigued to investigate, and then they're no longer interested in the house. What do you think they'll remember about the house? The great kitchen or the fake bed?
As our home staging statistics confirm, leaving a home vacant is better than partial, minimal, or budget home staging, but if leaving a house vacant can mean as much as a 6% loss compared to a professional staging, imagine the loss as a result of a budget staging.
To maximize the value of your Northern Virginia, Washington DC or Maryland home, full home staging is our recommendation.
Give us a call to ensure your Washington DC area home is staged to maximize its value.
If you are considering selling your home in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland and wish to use home staging, sign up for our newsletter and receive a complimentary home preparation guide. Both the newsletter and the guide will direct you in the best preparation projects to ready your home for sale.
If you are interested in learning more about home staging in Washington DC go to our home page and browse around.
Is Home Staging Worth It in Washington, DC, Northern Virginia and Maryland?
We have completed our home staging statistics for 2015. This is our fourth year validating that home staging in the Washington DC metro area has a clear and calculable impact on the sales price of a home.
Our real estate listing information reveals that using Preferred Staging improves the price of a vacant home by 5% on average compared to leaving the home vacant. Using a budget home stager is worse than leaving a home completely vacant. We wrote a full blog on that.
We use the percentage of ask price to calculate the impact of Preferred Staging's home staging versus other options. This is an imperfect measure, but since every home is unique, we believe that the averaging of home list price and sales price is, at least, a consistent measure.
This measurement actually understates the impact of our home stagings. We have seen home sellers raise their asking price after we have staged the home, but before the official listing was published. We do not recommend this, and always suggest our home staging clients follow the recommendations of their Realtor. However, we do know this happens and it actually creates an unfair advantage for the non-home staged homes in the way we calculate our statistics.
Preferred Staging's Statistics for Home Staging in Washington DC Metropolitan Area
No matter how you look at it, staging is beneficial. Call us to schedule a meeting so we can discuss further.
If you are considering selling your home in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland and wish to use home staging, sign up for our newsletter and receive a complimentary home preparation guide. Both the newsletter and the guide will direct you in the best preparation projects to ready your home for sale.
If you are interested in learning more about home staging in the Washington DC area go to our home page and browse around.
