Staging: Do staged homes sell faster?
At West Haven Group, we place a lot of emphasis on making your property stand out among the hundreds of others listed and we are proud to have strong marketing skills on our team to do this effectively. One marketing tactic we employ and encourage our clients to do is staging—which is basically making your house a neutral canvas so that prospective buyers can easily visualize themselves living there. Ensuring that your listed property presents well is crucial to a successful sale and effective staging accentuates a home’s best features and brings it to life.
Staging your house usually includes:
- Updating the interior paint and colour scheme
- Removing clutter and personal possessions
- Restyling artworks, shelves, and furniture
- Making the best use of, or redefining, rooms and spaces. This may include rearranging furniture, adding lighting and mirrors, accentuating views etc.
Does staging make a difference in sale time?
Given how crazy our real estate market is in Vancouver, we can understand why many sellers would wonder if they even need to spend the time and money to do this when properties seem to “sell themselves”—but let us assure you it is a worthwhile investment. According to the Real Estate Staging Association, staged homes spend 73 percent less time on the market than their un-staged counterparts. They also sell for significantly more—a 2020 survey of 13,000 staged homes conducted by the Real Estate Staging Association showed that 85 percent of those homes sold for 5 percent to 25 percent over listing price, averaging just 25 days on the market.
At West Haven Group, we employ some form of staging in almost all of our properties and our results speak for themselves. In 2019, West Haven Group’s listings took an average of just 21 days to sell, compared to a market average of 90 days for comparable properties!
Can you do this yourself?
It is possible to stage your own home, yes, but it is important that you have a good eye for design and that you work with your agent to ensure you are staging it correctly to appeal to your target market. For example, if you are selling a two-bedroom apartment it is likely that you will be selling to a young couple considering starting a family soon so it may be a good idea to stage the extra bedroom in a way that makes it appeal as a potential nursery.
Many people are too familiar to look at their own spaces with a third-party lens so it can be a good idea to work with a professional home staging company.
Steps to prepare for staging
There are several things you can do to expedite the process if you have your agent or a company coming to stage your home—although we recommend anyone considering selling to take these steps as they are beneficial for all listings.
- Clean, clean, clean – hiring a professional cleaner can be a cost-effective choice to ensure this is done properly.
- Declutter and remove personal items – remember that we want potential buyers to be able to see themselves living here…seeing pictures of you will make them feel like they are in your house.
- Complete small repairs – if the sink tap leaks, now is the time to replace it. The same goes for any chips in the walls or other obvious wear and tear.
- If you can, paint—it will brighten up the whole space and make it feel new—creating yet another selling feature for a potential buyer.
These steps will help your agent, or staging company, and will help your property stand out even more.
We are here to help
At the West Haven Group, we have a full-proof system made up of a dynamic set of tools to help produce the best results in the sale of your property—this includes offering professional staging services. We believe that preparation guidance is critical in maximizing a property’s perception of value. We do this by working with expert staging companies as well as utilizing the West Haven Group’s own personal warehouse inventory of curated accessories.
This service can range in terms of the extent of staging—everything from offering up the advice on how to best show your home, to a full stage.
Partial staging
If we decide that only partial staging is needed then we will request photos of every room. We will then follow up with a list of exactly what is needed—this can include storing or hiding certain items or moving furniture around to better showcase the layout. This helps ensure your space is ready for us to spend a couple of hours making adjustments to prepare for photos, or alternatively, provides us with a canvas to build upon using various staging items.
Full staging
Very commonly, we will do full stages for our clients—but this means that your property either has to be vacant or that you have the ability to move out and store all of your furniture and personal items so that the property can be fully furnished and accessorized. We will accentuate the best features of the property, improve the feel of the layout through staging techniques and mask any flaws. This will make a property be made to feel more expensive, newer, and overall more elevated—all of the hoped-for outcomes of effective staging.
Full staging tends to see the best results given that the property is being staged strictly for the purposes of a successful sale.
If you are still trying to decide whether staging is needed for your property, reach out to us to talk more about what is best for you—we would be very happy to discuss the process and associated costs with you.