According to those who make house styling for sale their business, the hardest thing for some home sellers to do is to cut the cord with their home. Your house is now an asset looking to be liquidated. Selling may not be as difficult as divorce, but it’s every bit as permanent and it involves letting go.
From the very minute you decide to put your house on the market, the nature of the walls, ceilings, and the floors you have called ‘home’ changes. When you decide to play the Real Estate Game, your house becomes your playing piece and it must be considered as something other than the collection of memories you’ve made there. Now it is a product. Now it is simply a used house sitting on the used-house-lot with hundreds of others. (This is tough, we know. Nevertheless, this is how you should view it.)
Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish this is to move out. Pack everything up and walk away. Call in a home styling design team and let them transform the house into something totally attractive and inviting in which somebody else can make memories. Clean, simple, quick. Unfortunately, few of us can make the move that quickly and cleanly. There is, after all, a process to be followed. The game has its rules.
If you cannot just move your own things into a new house right away, consider moving them into a storage unit temporarily. If you can, move your family into a serviced apartment or other short-term rental accommodation so that your home stagers can do their magic and get the old place sold.
The highlight of investing in home staging is that, not only does the old place usually sell in a matter of days rather than months, your investment also comes back many-fold: in many cases well above the asking price. This bonus will not only cover your staging costs, but also your temporary dwelling costs if you decide to follow this option.
The other steps, including cleaning and repairing, can be done either by you and yours, or be seen to by the home staging company you’ve chosen. There is usually an additional charge for anything over and above the actual staging of the property and only you know whether your valuable time is better spent scrubbing grout in the bathroom, or working to make the money to pay to have it done. Anything you can have done by professionals is probably worth the cost.
In the end, you want a house that is squeaky clean with doors that don’t (squeak, that is). The object of the game, getting the highest price for your home, is easier to accomplish if certain goals are met along the way. The people you’ve chosen to do your house styling for sale will ensure that everything is perfect before the first prospective buyer enters the property.
They will transform your clean slate into something that looks like it appeared in a photo spread for Home Beautiful magazine. They will bring in furnishings, art, and décor to enhance and spectacular-ise your property in a way that will appeal to the broadest group of buyers possible. They do this by using neutral colours, and new furniture to create the appearance of space, light, and beauty. Their goal is to make as many buyers as possible fall in love with your property and ensure that offers come flowing in.
You can see that the selection of a team of people to help you with house styling for sale is among the most critical decisions you will have to make in this game. Having the right people on your team – those with experience, skill, and proven talent – will ultimately make the difference in the real estate game. At Urban Chic Property Styling, we have had the privilege of being champions over and over again. If there were a house staging Olympics, we’d be Sydney’s team. We live this game. It’s not a sport to us. It’s serious business – just as it is to you. Call us and see.
