Imaginary Real Estate, Part 2
When potential buyers are walking through your home, or even looking at photos of it on-line, they are always, at some level, engaged in an imaginative reverie, feeling what it would be like to live in this particular home, to come home to it, to invite their friends over. The better we can make this imaginative experience for the potential buyer, the more likely they are to actually buy.
Last month we wrote about how depersonalizing your home can make it easier for buyers to imagine themselves living there, but in addition to depersonalizing it, we also want to show the house off to its best advantage in every way. Clearly, buyers want not only a home to call their own, but also a home that will enrich their day-to-day lives and that they can be proud of.
One of the best tools we have to help the buyer see the potential beauty of your home is the home stager. The stager is like an interior designer, but with a special skill set. Instead of customizing the interior of your home precisely to your liking, the stager’s talent lies in finding optimal uses for each space in your home and then staging it in such a way as to appeal to almost anyone.
Take a look at this empty, lonely, and utterly uninteresting bedroom.
It’s hard to imagine having a reason to stay in there for more than 30 seconds, let alone living 1/3 of your entire life in it.
But after the magic touches of professional stager Peggy Mustoe, the room is transformed into an inviting, elegant space.
Not only is there a place for your body to rest, there’s a place for your mind to rest. All of a sudden you can imagine yourself spending time there, relaxing, unwinding, and enjoying.
A good stager is a master of vision and design, able to see past the current furnishings, or lack thereof, to quickly surmise the home’s full potential. The stager will then choose and place furniture and décor in such a way as to make the home feel more modern, spacious, and livable.
Besides helping the buyer to pull the trigger, staging a home can also foster the perception of its true value. The staged bedroom above not only looks more inviting, it looks like a bedroom in a more expensive home.
Not all homes need to be professional staged, of course, but it’s a rare instance where we can’t at least make a few suggestions, based on a quarter century of walking buyers through Tierra Verde and Pinellas Bayway homes.
