Your Top 5 Questions Answered!
Before we begin, let us answer the first big question: what is home staging?
Home staging can be described as strategic dressing and decoration to make your home more appealing to buyers. You can pay professional companies to do this for you, employing home stagers’ expertise and qualifications to quickly and easily make your home more attractive, and therefore encourage buyers to view and purchase your property.
If you are asking yourself, ‘why should I pay for staging and décor in my home when I won’t be living here for much longer?’ (as well as still wondering, ‘how much does home staging cost?’) we are here to explain to you why staging for a home sale is a very good investment indeed!
Home Staging and Home Selling: The Statistics
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- Statistic 1 – Your home will sell 86% faster than other, unstaged properties once it has undergone professional home staging.
- Statistic 2 – Not only that, but 90% of people looking to buy a property start their search online – that means your home needs to stand out against hundreds, sometimes thousands of other homes.
Not Sure Home Staging Applies to You?
If you still live in your home, you may have furniture that blocks the best light in a room or have a layout that impedes traffic flow through the home, or be lucky enough to own a driveway big enough for two vehicles BUT has an overgrown hedge blocking half of the space.
If your property is empty there may be no ‘heart’ in the home anymore, or damp patches growing on the walls in your absence, which would not be a good look for a potential buyer.
Either way, you may have decided these issues are the next homeowner’s problem, but let us tell you now: you won’t find the next homeowner as quickly if you don’t make the most of your amazing features now.
If you make it easy for people to imagine living in it, half of the home-selling battle is won! You will save fees, time, and many other potential outlays too. So if you’re looking for tips to sell a house quickly, the fantastic news is that you’re already in the right place!
Now, let’s look at your top 5 questions on the topic of ‘how much does home staging cost?’
#1 What makes the cost of staging a home more expensive?
First of all, we strongly encourage you to look at home staging as a crucial investment, rather than it being an ‘expense’ or as something that will cost you. If you regard it as a part of the home selling process that gives you a return on your investment, you will be in a great position to make the most of expert home staging services and get a speedy sale, maybe even receiving a better profit in the process.
To explain the above point in numbers, according to a report by Home Staging Resource, people who have invested 1% of their property’s value on home staging recouped an average (whopping) 1000% return on their investment. That’s math we enjoy!
The cost of home staging is always less than a price reduction on your sale – if your home ends up on the market for a prolonged period of time, you could end up losing out on precious profit through no fault of your own. In fact, for every month your home is for sale, your final price could decrease by as much as 1%.
Another cost factor is to do with the home staging company you choose. For example, here at Stylebite, we have our own stock of staging and decor items that we draw from, which is stored in our 7000 sq ft warehouse – with our modern, on-trend inventory, we can keep costs to a minimum. We give our team regular training to keep everyone’s knowledge and understanding of styles current, meaning we can work quickly and cost-efficietnly for you.
First impressions are everything. And in a competitive real estate market, having an edge that will set your home apart from others can help your home sell quickly. Home buyers know what they are looking for, and staging your home in an appealing manner, offers buyers the opportunity to focus on the potential of the property and what life would be like living in your home.
On the other hand, the majority of potential home buyers these days begin their search online, which is why having staged photos that are aesthetically appealing is key to converting leads to possible offers on a home and reducing your home’s time on the real estate market.
#2 What is included in home staging?
At StyleBite we will always start with a custom design plan for your home. It’s a common myth that home staging means completely relinquishing your own personal tastes, style and possessions in favour of something bland and lacking in personality. The point of staging and decor is to help you see with a fresh pair of eyes how your house appears to others and how its presentation makes others feel.
Once you are happy with the design, we will move to the next phase, staging prep and installation. It doesn’t matter whether you live in your home and need what we call ‘occupied home staging’, or if your property is empty, we will select the perfect items from our warehouse inventory, pack them carefully and load them onto our truck to make sure the staging day goes as smoothly as possible. Once we are there we will set to work, arranging furniture, decor and any other items to make it photo-ready! And of course, we will ‘destage’ once your fabulous property is sold.
Within all of this, you will always have access to our friendly and helpful team who can answer your questions like ‘how do I get my home ready to sell?’ and talk to you about anything you need to know as well as handle all the paperwork.
Finally, another amazing benefit you get with StyleBite is Social Media Followers – we will share your listing with them to give your home even more exposure!
#3 When should you hire a professional stager?
There is one amazing time you can hire a professional stager and that is before you put your home on the market. This way you will not only have a more attractive property to sell right away, but you will avoid losing an audience of potential buyers who may only wish to see your property once in order to make their minds up.
In other words, you only get one chance to make a first impression!
But if you are here because you have been trying to sell for a month or more, then we can still help you save further time and expense, so don’t delay in contacting us right away!
We recommend waiting for us to come to see your home to make a custom design before you make any changes to your home yourself, as we could spot some great key items you already own that could be used in your home staging set-up.
#4 Which Rooms Are The Most Important to Stage?
We understand that it is important to you that we work on some beautiful home staging that doesn’t cost the earth and can be done swiftly by our experienced team.
Because we are asking the question, ‘how much does home staging cost?’ we are not here to give your home a complete makeover, but to make the most of what you already have.
In our opinion here at StyleBite, these are the most important rooms to focus on:
- The living room – buyers look at this room as the one they will spend a lot of their time in. They want a bright, light and easy feel to the room, so we will make some simple changes like swapping shades for ones that let the air and sunshine in easily and even paint a window frame white for extra brightness. When we delve deeper into living room staging, light-coloured furniture and decor will make the room feel bigger and any damaged floorboards or other hardware can be spot checked and repaired.
- The kitchen – a wonderful refresh can be achieved in your kitchen with some clever and strategic home staging. It isn’t personal, but people want to see themselves living in this home, not you! We will declutter and remove unnecessary items like rugs or drapes to brighten the room and make it feel more spacious.
- The master bedroom – while all bedrooms are important, the person or people looking at buying your house are likely to be the ones using the master bedroom. For this reason, we will make this room a calm oasis by removing wires, cables, electrical items, and of course, any clothes that don’t fit into your closet and end up on a chair – or worse, the floor!
Other rooms in the house are also important and we will address them all, but there are some that may not make or break a sale as much as the ones listed above, so you can save costs by focusing less on these:
- Dining room
- Bathroom
- Children’s room
- Guest room
#5 Is Home Staging Effective?
When it comes to saving money when you sell your property, home staging is the best and easiest thing you can do! You will sell your home quickly, at a price you will be more than happy with without months of advertising fees, storage costs (most likely if you try to declutter yourself and do DIY home staging) and possibly even more crazy costs if you move into your new home before selling your old one.
Expert staging and decor will save you the cost of relisting your home at a lower price when the sale takes longer than you expected, and more than that, you will get a much, much better return on your investment! See some examples for yourself on our portfolio page.
And don’t forget what not to fix when selling a house:
- Don’t try to undertake the DIY yourself – we all know those jobs we wish we hadn’t started can turn into much bigger jobs!
- Don’t decorate the entire property, as this can mean a lot of work for you with little return on investment
- Don’t spend time or money replacing things like electrical items you are leaving behind, as this changes very little to do with the sale price.
StyleBite Home Staging – Guide to Costs
Occupied Staging fees start from $1,495
- Vacant Staging fees start from $1,950
- Condo Staging fees start from $1,950
- Consultation fees range from $200 – $250
For the professional and creative service we provide, our fees are much more competitive than other companies. Why? Well, we have our own inventory and we don’t rent furniture or moving vehicles from a third party, which means we don’t have to pass on high costs to you. And because our team is always on top of cutting-edge trends and styles, your home will get the best of care and staging swiftly and beautifully.
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