When you are considering putting your home for sale in the hot market we are currently experiencing in the East Bay, you may think that all you have to do is sweep the floors, take out the trash and put a For Sale sign in your front yard to get offers on your home. Wait long enough, and you may, but will it be an offer at the best price you could have gotten for your home? With our decades of experience in this market, we say “no”.

The Three P’s of Selling Your Home

There are are three valuable aspects to consider when selling your home:

  1. Price:  When priced right, buyers can perceive the value of the assets of the property. When priced too high, buyers tend to notice the flaws. Pricing is also tied to strategy. In this market a home price may also be determined to take advantage of multiple offers.  Home price also influences time on the market. We use our knowledge of the local market to help sellers sell in a timely manner.
  2. Presentation: Presentation is about how the house looks when it is shown to buyers in person, online and in print. It’s how the home looks in comparison to others in the neighborhood and a similar price-point.  We try to help sellers achieve a highly competitive presentation, both at the property and how the file and reports look to the buyers and their agents.  We offer expert recommendations and full on-site management during the market-prep stage. Improvements are made with an eye towards maximizing the return on each dollar spent.  The biggest payoffs usually come from professional cleaning, painting and home staging.
  3. Promotion: The house is the hub of the story here, but it is difficult to promote a home well without great images and professional photography.  Great images happen when the house looks best through good presentation.

Getting all three of these right is important, but number two is crucial. Good Presentation can influence a higher starting price and also lends itself to more appealing promotion.  Staging is the final flourish. Let’s talk about staging. There are several reasons why we believe staged homes sell better than unstaged homes;

  1. Internet: All buyers use the internet in at least some stage of their search.  All real estate sites lead with property photos and give less space or merit to written descriptions.  This means high quality photos matter. The quality of these photographic representations is diminished when the rooms are not properly dressed. In addition, some internet buyer’s choose not to view homes that do not contain multiple photos.  It is difficult to obtain multiple useful photos of an unstaged house.  Your home may be overlooked if not well represented online.
  2. Makes the house seem larger:  Buyers are used to seeing staged homes in photos and use the furniture to gain a perspective on room size.  Without furniture, the eye goes straight to the back wall and rooms are assumed to be smaller than they actually are.
  3. Elevating the price perception: Staging can also convey elegance and luxury beyond the four walls.  In the 90’s, sellers replaced appliances with stainless steel and counter tops with granite. Now, staging is like sprinkling that sense of wealth in every room in the house.
  4. Marketing efforts get curtailed:  Our marketing materials start with good presentation.  When a home is not staged, pictures of empty rooms do not make it to our four page brochures by company policy.  As a result, the flyers will be limited to a one page flyer with a photo of the home’s exterior.  We also can not produce a quality property website without sufficient high resolution images that draw a buyer in.
  5. Less Stress – the home stager as part of the team:

A professional stager will eliminate stress by making the home selling process turnkey for clients. They will manage the entire process to make a property market-ready — from paint color selection, lighting updates, window treatments, floor refinishing, furniture rentals to packing and organizing services. They will do whatever it takes to appeal to as many buyers as possible and get the property sold quickly and for top dollar.

So does staging really result in higher sales prices, multiple bidders and quicker sales? According to the Real Estate Staging Association, In a study looking at nearly 170 staged properties valued at $300,000 to $499,000,  said that the homes in the study were sold in 22 days, compared with an average on-market time of 125 days for unstaged properties. In this article, by MarketWatch, you can see before and after photos and read stories of people getting over list price on staging their homes.

More proof:

The National Association of Realtors published this article about key points for sellers to understand the value of staging to showcase before and after photos and more.

As experts in listing homes in the East Bay, Berkeley Hills Realty has relationships with local  professional stagers whom we can recommend that have helped us get top dollar for our clients in ANY market. Let us partner with you on selling your home.