It’s spring 2021, and the real estate market in London is hot, hot, HOT!
If you’ve been considering selling your home, and you’re hoping to get top dollar for it, now might be a good time.
Homes are selling for far more than their asking price, so you might be excited at how much you can make.
This begs the question, though – is it still worth it to hire a London Ontario home stager to stage your home for sale?
In such a seller’s market, is it still worth it?
Let’s take a look.
Why Do You Stage Your Home?
Before we answer the first question, it might help to get a better understanding of why we stage our homes in the first place.
If you want to sell a product or service, it helps to make it look as appealing as possible.
Stores spend a great deal of time and money on merchandising, making sure their products look their best.
That’s true for anything, from notebooks to cars to baked goods to yes, even houses.
Because when you’re selling a product, you’re not just selling a product.
You’re selling an experience.
You’re selling a lifestyle.
You’re selling an idealized life that the buyer can see themselves in.
Now, people buy properties for two primary reasons – to build a life for themselves in it, or to use as an income property.
When it comes to the income property side of things, they’re looking at plenty of different factors, from more of a pure numbers angle.
There’s not much staging can do to help there.
But when people are wanting to build a life for themselves, staging will still make a significant difference.
Selling A Lifestyle
There’s a saying in real estate that people will make up their minds whether or not they want to buy a house within seconds of walking through the door.
This is true in balanced markets, but in a seller’s market this is even more likely to be true.
After all, a seller’s market is a fast moving market, and so people don’t have the time to carefully analyze their decision like they might in a more balanced market.
This means their decision is going to be based even more on emotion.
They’ll see the WOW factor and fall in love.
If there is a wow factor, that is.
This is where staging comes in.
When you stage your home, you want to grab the attention of your potential buyer as soon as they walk through the door.
You might not live in the Taj Mahal, but there’s a lot that staging can do to bring out your home’s beauty.
After all, the way we live in our homes and the way we present them for sale are two very different things.
So when you’re staging your home, you want to highlight the lives people can live in it.
Creating little vignettes throughout your home can help people picture their own lives mapped onto it.
And because everyone lives a different sort of life, you’ll want to highlight a variety of different activities.
Whether it’s reading, working from home, playing sports, gardening, cooking, spending time with company, or just enjoying a morning cup of coffee, staging is designed to highlight that.
And the truth is that when people walk into an empty home, they’ll have a hard time picturing how they can live in it.
If your home is still full of your furniture, though, this is still true.
Your lifestyle is different than your buyer’s lifestyle, so all the things you’ve done to personalize your home won’t help them picture what their own life could look like.
We accumulate a lot of stuff, and while that might make you feel great at home, it’s not so good from the perspective of selling your home.
That’s why staging is so important – it de-personalizes your home, making it easier for them to imagine themselves in it.
And all that is still going to be true whether you’re selling in a hot market or a more balanced one.
That’s why staging in a hot market still makes sense.
Questions? Call MatiDesign!
Are you considering putting your home on the market?
Have you been thinking of moving, but the market conditions make it a more appealing idea than usual?
If so, call MatiDesign today.
I’m Mati Edwards, a home stager, and I’ll help you sell your home for all it’s worth.
Call MatiDesign today, and let’s get your home prepared for sale.
