We’re going to be selling our house and moving out of state in a little under a year. Thankfully, we live in a place where houses sell like pancakes. So we’re getting plenty of realtor fliers talking about the advantages of their agency. One offers free upfront staging, home repairs, etc.
Has anyone else had their home staged? Do you have to move out while they tart up your home? I know you have to pay for it after the home sells, so if you’ve done this, how much did it cost?
We had our house staged. Yes, you have to move out. It was part of the realtor’s services, I don’t think it was extra. They made plenty of dough from us in any case.
I think it was well worth it. We got seven offers above list the first weekend it was shown.
This is fascinating, we don’t have this where I live. What do they do? Tidy up, hide your junk and buy flowers or do they go the whole hog and redecorate?
We were offered this when we were relocating. All our stuff would be in storage and we’d be in temporary housing. They would not only put in furniture, but clothes, pictures, groceries, trophies, private school stickers. Basically made it look like affluent people of good taste lived there (white people, naturally)
$4500 for the first week and then $500/week. (This was 2004)
We passed. Our house sold in 72 hours for well over asking.
A decade or two ago, BBC America featured a show in which a woman from California worked with UK homeowners who were having trouble selling their homes. She would stage the homes and immediately sell the house. I vaguely remember that in one case the house had hunting trophies (animal heads) on the walls which she removed.
And I can’t remember where I heard this but I’ve heard that some people see their homes staged (or, in other words, redecorated by someone with good taste) and change their minds about selling.
There a UK property programme called ‘Love it or leave it’, where they introduce a couple - one who wants to move and one who wants to stay, then they do a huge remodel of the property, usually building new extensions, and at the end they give the buyers the choice between selling or staying. I think they have to pay for the remodel though, as they obviously benefit from any value uplift.
I’ve been perusing real estate listings in my area a lot lately, and most of them look like the “whole hog and redecorate” option.
But it’s kind of amusing. Probably half these places never seem to have a TV. Sure, there are probably a few people who don’t have TVs in their house, but for me, knowing there’s a good spot for my TV set up is a major factor in buying a place.
There’s also a lot of those “Live Laugh Love” kinds of signs out there.
My guess is that in the current market there is no need for you to do this. It is a major inconvenience unless you already have a place to stay. It also means your stuff will be moved twice and this doubles the chance of breakage and scratches.
Declutter and cleanup should be enough in the current market. Houses in this area that are messy are getting above list offers.
On the other hand, in a market like this, if you can swing it with the bank, you can just buy your new place, move in, then sell the old one in a very short time, staged or not. Remember that when you close on the new place you don’t pay the first month’s mortgage because the bank already has that, so the financial hit from two houses isn’t as bad as you might think. If you can sell the first property quickly (as seems likely right now).
We have a similar program in the US called Love It or List It. I wonder which came first?
On the Love It or List It program, the couple gives the renovator/designer a budget for the redesign, so yes, they pay for it. They also give a budget to the realtor for a new house.
Ah, you’re right, it’s Love it or List it!
I think the North American version of Love it or List it is actually a Canadian production. And, yes, part of the “love it” option includes renovations but also redecorating.
I should have guessed the original was North American. ‘List it’ isn’t really a term we’d use in the UK.
Our current home is neither cluttered nor messy, but the decor is dark and out of date. I see from watching home improvement shows that light and bright sells homes. I’m starting to think that we won’t do the staging thing, but I might take steps to lightening up the decor on our own.
On the proceeds from the sale of our current home, we will be able to purchase a house outright for cash in the new place, so banks (other than paying off the little bit that remains on our current mortgage) won’t be involved. It’s starting to look like we’ll do the contingency purchase thing in the new neighborhood first, then sell the old home. Fingers crossed that the market is still strong early next year so that this won’t be a problem. This is a modest starter home in an upscale neighborhood within easy commuting distance to Silicon Valley jobs, so I have hopes.
It depends on how your current space is furnished and decorated. You want your prospective buyers to imagine themselves living there. You don’t want the current ambiance to get in the way.
For example: my wife is Persian. Her mother in law was trying to sell her own house. She was showing it as-is, the way she was living there.
It looked like this:
Very nice, very in-style if you’re an Iranian American. Painfully gaudy for almost anyone else.
Visiting prospects would walk in, wrinkle their noses, and shut down their interest. They just couldn’t see past the look of the rooms to imagine how they would redecorate. And the house stayed on the market for almost four months with no offer.
Finally, my wife insisted she take it off the market and find a staging service. When it went back up for sale, de-Persianized, it sold in two weeks.
So, yeah, it can make a difference, depending on the circumstances.
The one with Alistair Appleton and Ann Maurice? It was called House Doctor, and I loved it. Alistair was very cheeky and liked to tease Ann who would pretend to be exasperated. As for the decorating, she had a thing about people in the UK leaving their bins right outside their front doors. It’s something I always notice now!
LOL. Your didn’t have to mention this. I could tell just from the decor.
I think that was the show. (That was in the good old days, when BBC America actually showed actual British programs, as opposed to endless reruns of Star Trek shows or Law & Order. I wouldn’t mind if they showed the UK version of Law & Order but they don’t.)
House Doctor was on BBC America, too. They had several of these house shows that I really loved. One was called Home Front, and they showed a lot of practical ways to fix up your home. Of course, Changing Rooms was on there (and much better than the US Trading Spaces).
Right. I saw all of those shows on BBC America, but they don’t show such programs any longer. I particularly remember Home Front in the Garden with the one person obsessed with “water features”.
And that says an awful lot about people, doesn’t it?
If I were in the market, I’d have probably taken it as an opportunity to low-ball the offer. Exploit other’s inanity to get myself a cheaper place!