It’s possible that you don’t know yet about the practice of staging property prior to listing. There was a time when emptying a home of all the furniture and personal belongings of the owner was all it took to prepare a home for sale. Such is not the case today. As a matter of fact, leaving a house vacant and empty can be the kiss of death when it comes to enticing a prospective buyer to make an offer.

As the real estate industry became more sophisticated, selling agents learned that prospective buyers often have trouble imagining how the home will look once furnished and filled with their own belongings. So it’s now usual for sellers to employ a professional home stager to prepare the presentation of the home in order to make that ‘this house could be mine’ vision easier to conjure up. If you’ve ever been house hunting, you know that when you enter an empty living room, you immediately wonder, “Where will the television go?”

The services of a professional whose world revolves around staging property can actually make the process of selling your home go much more smoothly. If the missing stress isn’t enough to sell you on the service, understand that while the service costs only a percent or two of the home’s asking price, the house will usually sell for far more – in the neighbourhood of 15 to 20 percent more.
Some homeowners attempt to save a few dollars by staging the home without professional help. This can work, but the secret to good staging lies in the proprietary information a styling company has that the average homeowner may not.

The home staging industry invests heavily in research. By taking steps to learn and understand what makes buyers tick, a professional home stylist can put together an image of ‘home’ for that buyer that immediately resonates with them. When the home is painted in the colours that the buyer loves; when the art on the walls and the quality of the towels in the bathroom all speak to the soul of the buyer, the job of selling the home becomes easier. There is an instant connection between the house and the buyer, making an offer more likely.

Even if you are a trained interior decorator, you may not be prepared to effectively stage a home for sale. Interior decoration and home staging are different sides of the same coin.
Interior decorators concentrate their attention on making a house speak about the preferences of those who live within it. In the case of a house that is for sale, the less like the current owner the house is the better. Home stagers have a pretty good idea what sort of people will buy the home you are offering for sale. Based on certain demographic information, including income, education, number of bedrooms needed and other factors, your home stager can peg the buyer amazingly well. The stager can then look to the intensive research done by the industry to dress the home accordingly from wall colour to throw cushions.

Ultimately, the decision to hire – or not hire – a professional home stager is one that is all about business. The sale of a home is usually the biggest business transaction undertaken in a lifetime. The question of staging is all about whether or not you want to get the biggest possible return on your real estate investment. Statistically and practically, the extra step of staging property ahead of listing garners more money at sale. It’s as simple as that.

Finding the best property stylist available may not be as easy. Today, property styling companies are cropping up like mushrooms. Because the service is now an integral part of a successful real estate transaction, there seem to be new companies on every corner. We urge you to think carefully before you select a home stager.

In the end, the best staging company is the one with the most experience. Each and every home such a company stages builds the experience and expertise of the design team. In other words; practice makes perfect. Look for a company that has been staging property for decades, not months or even years – consumers have a way of weeding out the bad ones quickly. When a company has been around for as long as Urban Chic Property Styling, you can bet your bottom dollar that they know what they are doing. Call us today and see why we are the premier home staging company in the greater Sydney area.