The Beauty Queen and the Best Valued Home Will Sell!

This is 2011 and each viewer of homes on the Internet has one and only one goal in mind and that is to eliminate your home from further consideration.  Just because you are thinking that your house is so gorgeous and wonderfully done, there are 10 other buyers who don't agree with you.  The purpose of video exposure is to create an environment where we critique our competition with no consequence to us.  Why have all these TV programs on decorating been so popular?  Surely a little learning occurs for us but a lot of the fun comes from criticizing the designer.  We love to pick apart what is assembled and redo because we can do it better!  That is one factor of staging your home with a professional when getting ready to sell that you don't want to overlook. 

What do we mean by this term "staging"?  Do we really have to set it up on a stage and look at it or do we produce and direct a production worthy of Broadway?  The dictionary includes both descriptions and either are correct. So when we stage our homes we are producing a platform to epitomize the best we can offer.  As on Broadway we want to showcase a look and a feel about how we live in this home and we want it choreographed as perfect.  We want the buyers to be impressed and want them to come and visit in person not just on the net.  We long for approval from a potential buyer not a write off of our home because of something or some picture that is not quite right.  How are your photos portraying your home that you are trying to sell?  Are they inviting to visitors to include on an actual tour of homes or are they dismissing you as a no?  Anything from lack of warmth in the setting, low visual impact or too vanilla of a paint job can be the turnoff to a buyer.  What can you do to help create the warmth and visual appeal needed?

Get a good stager to professionally arrange furniture and give it a look of beauty queen appeal from outside looking in rather than inside looking out.  This will make all the difference in whether your home is chosen for "real look" or the elimination on the internet.  When we live in a house for 1 year or 10 years we tend not to see it as others do but to see it as we want and like.  This is the big mistake that sellers make.  They tend to forget that x and y generation people (the majority of today's buyers) have different tastes than we do.  We don't want to project our tastes on them because it is very different from theirs and by staging we have that opportunity to welcome them with fresh and appealing ideas.  In 25 years of selling real estate I have never listed a home for sale that did not need something added or subtracted or renewed.  It is the difference between sold and expired!