Home buyers who seek to own property in the Greater Sydney area really want to live here. These people are making amazing sacrifices in order to be a part of the landed gentry. According to reports, these people save their money ruthlessly. They forego the big wedding, eating out, holidays, and even new clothes in order to sock away every last dollar toward the big day when they can become property owners. Is it any wonder that they are similarly ruthless when it comes to the way their dream home is presented? Styling properties is a process that’s more important to these buyers than most of us imagine.
Let’s face it. In order to live in the Greater Sydney area, buyers must fork over a large hunk of cash. Is living in our area impossibly expensive? Obviously not. Employers still locate in our area in spite of the cost of housing, and their employees come to Sydney prepared to spend more than they’d like on four walls and a roof. However – and this is important – they expect us to provide them with more for the money they are spending.
They seek assurances – even unspoken ones – that the house they choose is well maintained. (After all they’ve been through, they don’t want the roof to fail in the first 10 years, or be forced to endure expensive plumbing or electrical failures anytime soon.) These are costs they simply cannot afford to take on. So they become more selective in the houses they consider.
It is for these reasons that today’s buyers virtually insist on a professionally styled home. They want the whole shebang. It makes them feel better to have the house laid out for them on a silver platter – it lets them know that the property is worth the sacrifices they have made along the road to home ownership. Furthermore, the house has to be promising in its state of repair. Your house has to speak to buyers in soothing tones that inspire confidence.
Yes. There is a psychology in home selling that we speak of more often every day. It turns out that the buying decisions made around big-ticket items like homes are made deep in the brain in that place where emotions live. It is emotion that drives home-buying decisions and so it is a factor that cannot be ignored by the seller.
Sellers, agents, and home stylists cannot afford not to tailor their sales message to the emotional seat of the brain any more than automobile manufacturers or toothpaste companies can. If that is the place decisions are made, then that is where the sales message must be delivered.
Today, we see advertisements for cars concentrating on the safety of passengers. We see toothpaste commercials that focus on overall dental health for longer, happier lives. We see housing advertisements that speak to our inner child and the sense of safety that “home” provided to us when we were small. Naturally, we gravitate toward those products and services that feed our need for emotional safety and stability.
Is it any wonder, then, that today’s home stylists focus on fabrics, colours, and tactile cues that make us ‘feel’ warm and fuzzy? Feelings are an important currency in the world of housing.
Many of the messages we receive when we inspect a house are subliminal ones. If the art on the walls is soothing and harkens back to a safer time, we feel calm. When the colour on the walls is calming and neutral, we are subliminally aware that stress is absent in the space. We feel safe and that is reason enough to buy a house.
If you’re planning to sell a home in the Greater Sydney area, know that styling properties is essential to their sale in this market. Because proper professional property staging can turn the tide for hesitant and extremely conservative buyers by helping them to feel at ease, the staging of your home is an important investment in the success of our sale. Without staging, your house may be destined to languish on the market for months, costing you money all the while. Staging simply makes sense. Allow us to help you with the details. It’s what we do best.
Photo credit: Image courtesy of Corinthian Doors and CSR Gyprock Plasterboard.
