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Home Staging

Services › Home Staging

Whether a vacant house, an occupied home, or a builder’s model show home, they each have unique requirements that require quick and cost effective solutions. Nobody wants to invest in staging unless there are clear and concrete benefits that translate into a quick and profitable sale.  So it all comes down to costs.

There are tricks to making a budget stretch and where to get the biggest bang for the buck. Our job is to analysis this, and help you understand how far your money will go.

We add value by helping buyers emotionally connect with, and visualize a home as the fulfillment of their dream for a new lifestyle.  One of the oldest truisms is that people buy a home based on emotion and justify their decision with facts.  Buyers relate first to how a home feels before they look to its specifications.  In other words, the specs of a home – square footage, R-Values, etc. – don’t come into play in the buying decision until an emotional connection has been made between the buyers and their new home.

We showcase the strengths of the home plans.  Smart decorating can accentuate your home’s strengths and moderate its shortcomings. We use design elements – furniture, accessories, artworks, built-ins, window treatments, specialty flooring designs, etc. – to direct buyers’ attention the strengths.  Furniture and accessory scale and placement are defined to emphasis and showcase the functionality of living spaces.

According to the National Association of Realtors, staged homes sell for about six percent more, on average, than those not staged. When a home stays on the market, the price goes down, falling an average of 1% for every month it’s on the market. Staged homes sell faster, which means they’re less likely to be subjected to a reduction in price. When it comes to more expensive properties, the difference can be dramatic.

Do the math – how much does the house cost per day to carry during the sale and

closing period?  For every dollar spent on staging, the return on investment (ROI) would be $3 in the sale.

Occupied Home Staging

You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. Home Staging is the art of depersonalizing a home, highlighting its best features to make it appealing to the widest range of buyers, while increasing the chances for a fast and profitable sale. Unfortunately it’s hard for most homeowners to complete this process because they are emotionally attached to their home and the belongings within it.

The process begins with an in-depth consultation at the home and ends with a prioritized, detailed list of action items to get the house ready for sale. We will start by walking through and making a room-by-room checklist of items that need to be repaired, removed, or rearranged. We discuss optimal furniture layouts to showcase your home to sellers and, if needed, paint colour selections, furniture rental options, accessories shopping and more. At the end of the consultation we will review your to-do list together, determine what else we can help you with (or even if you want to hand over the whole thing to us!) and get you on your way to a fast and profitable sale.

Vacant Home Staging

Staging a vacant space is like staging a movie set, but instead, setting “the lifestyle stage”. Whatever the home and whatever the lifestyle, staging takes an empty shell and transforms it into a home that buyers will fall in love with.  Deficiencies are accentuated in a vacant house. Most buyers (an astounding 90%) cannot visualize how to use interior space, and often an unoccupied house appears either vast or too small, cold and “incomplete”. People want to see where they can sit as a family and watch television…. the bachelor needs to see that there is room for entertaining a group of his friends or to impress his girlfriend. It’s about demonstrating a lifestyle, as buyers not only want to purchase a home, they want the lifestyle that comes with it. Buyers do not emotionally connect to an empty space, feeling lukewarm about the property, hence being reluctant to make an offer.  When they do make an offer, they expect a discount from the asking price.

One of our tricks is through the uses of vignettes (pronounced vin-yet’), which are carefully planned and arranged illustration of interior décor that tell a story.  Better described as furnishing sparingly. Sparse furnishings and smart use of color with paint, wallpaper or other décor can work wonders, making a cramped room seem “cozy,” for example.
We use vignettes when you don’t have a sizeable budget, when the real estate market is hot, when you want to showcase a certain feature of the home or when you want to mask a certain deficiency (we’ve used sound systems to overcome road noise, window coverings to overcome a small back yard, a neighbours brick wall, or a busy street, etc.).  We are masters of making your scene.