Make the Buyers Fall in Love with Your Home!
Ever heard the old saying “You only have one chance to make a great first impression”? Well never is that truer than when you are selling your home. We spend many hours a week…. well some us do, primping and preening ourselves for the job interview, the first date or that presentation we’ve been dreading. Preparing your home for sale should be no different, think of it as if every open home is like a first date, you’ve got to bring your A game to make them fall in love. In this case, we want them to fall in love with your home.
So where do you start? 30 seconds is all you have to capture a buyers attention. Buyers are shopping on emotion rather than logic so appealing to peoples ‘gut instinct’ is your best chance of not only having them fall in love but also receiving a fantastic offer. Your chosen Tommy’s real estate agent will usually offer valuable advice to declutter and tidy up any neglected maintenance but often your home or newly empty investment property needs more than a quick tidy up.
Should I Hire a Professional Stager?
This is when you need to get the professionals in. Not only should you consider painting out the feature walls left over from the 90’s but you should also invest in a professional Interior Stylist and Home Stager. A professional Interior Stylist has the ability to walk into a home and visualise exactly what it could look like once it’s home staged, filled with beautiful furniture, accessories and of course Wow factor.
When real estate agents talk about staging your home, they’re referring to a method of decorating that is designed to showcase the home’s best assets, impress buyers and sell it quickly for the highest possible price. Because not all sellers stage their homes – especially homes in lower price ranges – you’ll be at a massive advantage if you do. Great Home Staging highlights your home’s strengths, downplays any weakness’s and appeals to the greatest possible pool of prospective buyers.
But more than that Home Staging sets an expectation of attention to detail, warmth and quality before the buyer even steps in the door. Let’s face it as we shop online more and more, the property is no exception. People have already chosen to view your home based on the photos and profile they have seen online so that the first impression before the buyer has set foot on your doorstep is incredibly important.
It’s also important to remember that an Interior Stylist can help and work with people that may live in their home but simply need to make it more appealing to a wider audience. This is a great option for people who don’t have the luxury of moving out of their home but need an injection of wow factor that their current furniture and accessories don’t provide. Consider putting some furniture in storage and pack up personal possessions, this will allow an Interior Stylist to bring fresh new furniture and accessories into the home and blend it with what you already have to create not only a cohesive look but a look that can elevate your home to a new level and price bracket.
Buyers are buying a dream – they want to feel as though they are moving into their new home, not your old home and lifestyle. So the goal is to not just present a home as if you are selling the bricks and mortar but to be presenting an opportunity to the buyers that they can live the lifestyle they’d love if they owned your home. Yes, it’s a sales pitch for your home, it’ll take some effort, time and money. But we do this for ourselves every day, for our boss at work, our new workmate we have to sit next to every day and our new love interest we always want to look our best for.
When it comes to staging your home for sale it not only creates the great first impression we’re looking for but it helps sell the dream and creates a more emotional purchase from the buyer. More emotion equals a higher offer and often more competition between purchasers. Home Staging and Styling will be the difference between simply selling your home and achieving an amazing sale! We always want Amazing!
Here are some steps to take when selling your property:
- Declutter, declutter, declutter. It gets said time and time again but that’s because it’s true. What looks like loved possessions to you may look like clutter to everyone else, letting your potential buyer be distracted and seeing the spaces as smaller than they actually are. Consider putting old furniture and personal possessions into storage!
- Take care of any unfinished maintenance both inside and outside of your property. People like to see that a home has been loved and looked after to pay top dollar.
- Consider a new paint job. A fresh coat of paint can really go a long way to take a home from drab to fab.
- Clean!! A clean house is a loved house, scrub the bathrooms and kitchen, wash floors and windows. No one pays extra for bad smells.
- Hire an Interior Stylist to give your house the once over. Remember first Impressions are everything.
At Tommy’s, our agents are used to working closely with home stylists/stager and if you are thinking of selling your property, get in touch with any of our agents and they will be able to connect you with some of the best stylists in the market and work on enhancing the interior to get your house sold.
