In the first few days a house is on the market–especially in a desirable neighborhood–it is so important to have your property look as appealing as possible. There are eager, anxious buyers who get alerts as soon as a property enters the MLS on their desired street, neighborhood or zipcode. These buyers are looking for a home to fall in love with so they can BUY NOW!
A real estate agent I’ve worked with before asked me to come to a property in a hot family neighborhood to “quickly” move the owners stuff around so that it looks as staged as possible for her Open House this Sunday (today is Thursday). It would be easy to be flip or sarcastic or snarky about what this home looked like, but to me it just showed how much pressure the home owner must be under. He had had to close his antique shop a while ago and guess where the inventory was? Yep, floor to ceiling in every room. I felt so badly for him AND the listing agent–she’s already paid to advertise the Open House. And he’s been promising to take care of everything for months. So why hasn’t the house been cleared out, cleaned up and generally prettified?
In my experience when this happens, the seller is usually having to sell for reasons not of their choosing. They don’t really want to leave the home. That kind of stress often leads to depression which leads to inertia which leads to…a hopelessly dated and or cluttered, and or dirty house going on the market.
The Result: the listing is seen by those early ”most likely to buy” buyers as wholly overpriced, if they even cross the threshold to see it at all. The house simply will not sell–at least not for anywhere near the price it could get if it looked like a buyers dream instead of a sellers nightmare. The offers (if they come in at all) won’t be off by hundreds of dollars but by tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one would choose to lose that much money, would they?
The Solution (whether you’re the seller or the listing agent): Bring in a Stager for a consult as soon as possible. Our marketing experience, passion and professional expertise can help a seller see what a buyer wants to see in order to want to buy.
Whether we do the work, point you in the right direction or lay out a step-by-step plan, we can get the process started and keep everyone focused on the goal: if you HAVE to sell, get as much money as you can, as quickly as possible, and move on with your life.
