After our article last week on selling an empty home, we had some queries sent our way on home styling, or ‘staging’. What is it, why would you do it and is it expensive?
Still a fairly new practice in Australia, home staging has been a popular part of the marketing process overseas for many years, as a way to make the property as appealing as possible to potential buyers.
People buying a home want to imagine themselves in it, so the job of a home stylist is to create a look and feel that will have them saying ‘This is perfect, I can see us living here!’ That’s the emotional response that will ensure a sale, and quite possibly at a better price.
At the lowest end, home stylists will assess the home’s strengths and weaknesses, then make suggestions for improvement. This could be simply moving furniture around, painting a wall or clearing out clutter.
At the next level, they might re-decorate your home to suit the style of building and the likely buyers. This can involve using some of your furniture and fittings together with pieces they have sourced, depending on your budget and the look they are creating. They can also organise tradespeople to tackle any outstanding tasks.
At the top end, the stylists will start with the completely blank canvas of an empty home and create a look that will appeal to the buyer demographic. This might mean they replace all your furnishings and belongings with carefully selected furniture, bed linen, floor coverings, artwork, window dressings, etc that all work together to form a consistent image.
The result of all this effort can be that your home will sell quicker and at a higher price. If Aunt Alice’s quaint little old cottage in the inner city goes on the market, its position alone is likely to attract the young urban crowd or investors who will lease it to young urbans. Needless to say, a complete makeover would replace Alice’s stuffed armchairs and antimacassars with state of the art gadgets, furnishings and artwork, and attract a much higher price accordingly.
Usually, however, a stylist’s skills are most effective if your home appeals to owner-occupiers, since investors tend to focus on returns, rather than the emotional impact of a home.