For all the years in which people have been selling and trading houses, you would think we’d have it all sorted out. Still, every year or so there is a new innovation in the way we go about the process of exchanging homes. Those innovations are usually good ones, so the improvements in the real estate business are useful and beneficial to all parties concerned. Lately, we’ve learned that if we want to sell a property we need to direct our marketing message to the emotional side of our intended buyer. Styling properties to appeal to the emotions of buyers is the key to a faster and more profitable home sale.
Who knew that emotions played such an important role in making big buying decisions? Perhaps nobody ever thought to ask precisely what makes a decision to buy happen. For whatever reason, it’s only lately come to light that we humans need to have our hearts engaged before we actually engage our cheque books. There is an emotional component – a big one with powerful implications – in buying a piece of real estate.
It could be that the emotional ‘ownership’ part of the puzzle is present in all choices. We know it is part of the decision to choose a mate. It plays a part in how we dress – we make choices that we feel make us more desirable and, therefore, more valuable. We must certainly agree that it affects the way we buy cars – otherwise there would not be so many middle-aged men on the highways driving red convertible sports cars. So how do we employ the emotions in selling our particular piece of real estate?
For most of us this is taken care of by our real estate sales team. That team consists of our selling agent, and our home stylists. These two individuals keep close watch on what buyers are buying and how the purchase relates to their personal lives.
We know that feelings of affluence and success play major parts in the buying of houses. Today’s buyers, the majority of whom are millennials who came of age around the turn of the century, are extremely upwardly mobile. Their eyes are most definitely on the prize. One of the ways they seek to lay hands on that prize is to ‘look the part’. This means they see a house as a backdrop on which they can project their life story.
When they look at a house they ask themselves questions like, “What will my boss think of this place?” “Will he see it as a step upward?” “Will he be impressed?”
They ask similar questions on behalf of their children. “Will my kids be going to an excellent school where achievement is extremely important?” “Will the children be amongst other neighbourhood children who share our values and our goals?”
The answers to these sets of questions directly impact the emotions involved in the sale. If the answers make the potential buyer ‘feel good’, the sale will progress. If the answers have any other effect, the sale goes down the tubes.
It becomes crystal clear that making any property look as if it is on the upper side of the income range of the prospective buyer makes it more attractive. The way to do that is by dressing the property up. Enter your home stylist.
An excellent home stylist can make things that would otherwise look like liabilities in the property into something approaching endearing. The unfortunate placement of a window can be made to look — if not lovely — at least not ghastly. In the hands of a design professional, even modest houses can be made to look charmingly upscale. In styling property, that’s how we engage buyer emotions.
At Urban Chic Property Styling we keep our fingers firmly on the pulse of the buying public. When styling properties, we engage in constant attention to research, theory, and other observations in order that we might give you the best possible representation. We use every talent we have to make your property capture the emotions of buyers. The resulting sales are, then, higher in price and come more quickly than you’d imagined.
Photo credit: Image courtesy of Lime Lace.
