It is not a coincidence that the developers producing new builds, always produce show homes to help sell their new properties. It can improve your property sale or your property rental for a number of reasons.
By creating a show home, these developers are staging the property to reveal its full potential; it is a lot easier to sell a property to a prospective buyer, by getting them to visualise their life in a furnished property, compared to one with empty rooms and a floor protection film covering!
What is staging?
Staging is the process of dressing a property up to create a stylish look, which maximises its appearance and increases its appeal to potential buyers or tenants. Even though in the UK it is a strategy primarily used by developers to sell new builds, it is not limited to new builds; it can be used to help sell or rent any property. By making a property more appealing and increasing its “Wow Factor”, staging can help make a property sell or rent faster and at a higher price.
It allows a prospective buyer to see a property looking its best and visualize themselves living in the property as their future home. By creating this vision, staging has a powerful psychological impact on prospective buyers or tenants, increasing the chance they’ll want to either purchase or rent your property.
How to stage?
As explained, staging is about maximising the appearance of a property and styling rooms to make it look fit for a magazine. This doesn’t necessarily mean a full refurbishment is required; it can be achieved by doing as little as decluttering and tidying a property. Typically, it includes presenting the property in a neutral, non-personalised way and clever interior design of furnishings to make it stand out and more appealing than the rest on the market, for as little cost as possible. These changes to your property can either be made by yourself or you can instruct a professional to do it for you.
What are the benefits of staging your property?
When done correctly, the appearance of a staged property is improved; it appears bigger, brighter, warmer and most importantly more homely. These factors increase its desirability and dramatically improves the sale or rental of a property.
There are several benefits of staging a property, including:
- Your adverts stand out... a staged property has a certain “Wow Factor” about it. This “Wow Factor” helps it stand out from other properties on the market.
- Increase in viewings... a staged property is designed to be more appealing to prospective buyers/tenants. As a result of its increased appeal, it receives more attention and a greater number of viewings.
- Increase in offers... a staged property helps potential buyers/tenants visualise their future lives in the property and makes viewers want to buy/rent it. This can lead to an increased number of offers.
- Reduced time on the market... a staged property has an increased appeal; subsequently, a staged property spends less time on the market compared to an unstaged property.
- Make more money... although staging a property requires an additional investment, a staged property can justify a higher asking price. It gives a property a greater perceived value; on average staged properties sell for ~10% more than market value.
In America, staging is very popular. Relators (American estate agents) dress up properties to make them as appealing as possible to prospective buyers. As a result of their work, on average a property is only on the market for 24 days. Compare this to the UK market, where staging is rarely used and the average time a property is on the market for is 126 days. This may be a coincidence; however, it is unlikely. Staging really does improve the sale of a property!
Not only does staging make your property appeal to a wider range of prospective buyers/tenants, but it also increases its perceived value. These combined factors help homeowners not only sell/rent their properties more quickly, but also make more money from them.
If you are either struggling to sell your property or looking to maximise the value of your property, you could either stage your property yourself or one of our independent property advisors (IPAs) who offer a staging service could help you!
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