Reading the NAEBA article on Home Staging made be think of my own personal experience just recently.
As a home stager, I routinely view properties though the "eyes of buyer". I look past mounds of clutter, unattractive paint and wallpaper, disproportionate furniture, and host of other distractions to find the positive features of a given property. I then go about the task of assisting the home seller to enhance those positive selling features.
Normally, this is fairly easy to do, as I am not really trying to image "my" life or "my" things, I just following standard practices and techniques for merchandising properties for which I have been trained to do and have the experience doing so.
However, my husband and I are searching for recreational property in beautiful Whistler BC, Canada. We are primarily looking on line, as Whistler is a 2 ½ drive from our home. If it does not appeal to us on line, we are not going to make the drive up to see it. Until last weekend we had not seen anything that suited our requirements, but then we found this.
For the first time, since becoming a stager, I had to view properties, from my very own "buyer's eye". I truly was a potential home buyer.
This home by all descriptions fit it us to the T, in addition, it looked beautiful, and virtually move in ready. (This is important to me, as it is a second home, and I do not want to buy a make work project.
The home looks staged, either professionally or by the owner or a bit of both. The point here is, it definitely looks very well presented in the photos and tour. The home has enough furniture to look lived in and livable, and enough nice touches to add a homey cozy feel.
The result is that when we went to see it, I could do just that "see it" exactly what I was buying, the floor, ceiling, walls, windows, roof, counters, view etc. etc. I might also add, there were a number of small repairs and fix-ups that were CLEARLY evident. They were there for all to see. No cover ups, but the house still looked beautiful, is was easy to see all the good and all the bad.
In addition to this home, we viewed a few others. The next home we saw was not one I would have picked (and not one I ever saw on MLS), (thus, the reason for working with a good Realtor), however, when we viewed it, we quite liked it. What we could SEE of it that is. The problem was we could barely SEE any of it. The good or the bad!
The property was dirty, filled to the rafters with stuff, and had so much furniture and clutter, that it really was difficult to see the positive aspects. Most importantly for me in those few moments I was there though, was that I could not imagine "MY" things, how would I make this my home away from home.
All I could see was work, and lots of it. The fact, that the place was in such disarray made us look all the harder for the negative aspects. It did make us skeptical, so upon closer viewing we noticed some water damage to the ceiling, (the only thing in the whole place we could see clearly, as the walls, floors, windows, counters etc. where littered with stuff.)
In the end we found out there was significant water damage to this house, some of which I am sure could not be seen because of all the clutter, and unfortunately the one we really loved, was just a little too close to the highway. The noise was a factor for us.
My point here:
Is that a staged home is a home easily viewed and potential buyers can make their judgments based on clarity.
A cluttered home is not easily viewed and is both a disservice to the seller and the BUYER!
