What Is Home Staging? Who Needs It?

Home Staging is transforming your home into a marketable product to sell quickly for top dollar. Depending on the property, this is done in several different ways.

First of all, home staging is not new, nor a luxury—Home Staging translates to faster, better sales. Home Staging translates to your profit. You bought this house and turned it into your home.  Great!  But now it needs to be turned back into a house, a House for Sale, one that a buyer will find so inviting they fall in love at first sight and buy quickly.

Today your home must show smart from the start! That means it must be move-in ready, market ready if you want to sell fast and for top dollar.  Home Staging is not interior decorating.  It is arranging furniture and accessories to highlight the best features of the house – architecture, room size, a great view, a great fireplace, whatever it takes to maximize the property’s appeal to the most buyers.

If you are living in the home, Home Staging usually means we can use what you have and simply and fairly inexpensively add to and enhance it. The focus will be on updating with color and style to maximize your return.  Depersonalizing is a must.  (Remember, it’s not your home now, but a product appealing to the most buyers).

In retail it’s called merchandising. In real estate it’s called Staging.

Why stage a home?

Because buyers buy market ready homes, homes they have first seen online in fabulous photos and virtual tours. Because first impressions are what they are and real estate prices are subjective.

90% of home buyers look online first to select which homes to physically visit as a possible purchase. Those homes without photos immediately go to the “Must be something wrong with that one” list.  Homes with fabulous photos entice buyers to come see.  Professional Home Staging with Show Smart Home Staging includes professional photographs of your home as well as a Professional Virtual Tour (a $300 to $500 value) widely broadcast across the internet.  We want your home and our work to look its best online!  Buyers buy from the homes they have visited and fallen in love with.  Buying a home may start out as a logical decision, but always ends up an emotional one.

Call, email today.  Show Smart Home Staging can help you sell your home (757) 619-9789.

• What Our Clients Value About Us:

  “We paid another stager twice what Show-Smart charged for a consultation, and they told us we would have to remove all our furniture and rent a whole house full of new furniture. Patricia spent two hours with us explaining how she could rearrange our furniture more effectively and then showcase our home better by simply adding some color and accessories, a much more cost-effective alternative that worked!”

  P. Chang, Owner and Realtor, Single Family Home, Rockville

  “Patricia, I can't thank you enough. I have worked with professional television set designers before, but nobody made such a spectacular difference in just two hours! You said my place would look bigger [by rearranging the furniture], and oh were you ever right. The pictures and the listing look amazing. I already feel the place sold. You are the Magician. Thank you once again.”

  G. Meyers, Owner, Condo in Georgetown

  “We are WOWed by your staging, Patricia. Thank you so much for your wise advice and vision. We really needed a professional to “sell” our house. The icing on the cake was the professional Virtual Tour that you photographed. It is so much better than just a slide show. Have your potential clients look at it. They will sign up right away.”

  L. Sorenson, Owner, Townhouse, Decoverly

  “Thank you, Patricia. The buyer was absolutely the FIRST person to see the house staged. I’m sure your staging was the stimulus in the decision making process. ‘Kudos’ to you. I also noticed that it even ‘smelled’ cleanly occupied, rather than having that sterile empty scent. The Realtor’s told me 3 ‘nosey neighbors’ that had seen the house ‘unstaged’ last year said the staging made the BIG difference. And, your Virtual Tour, well...”

  S. Martin, Estate Trustee, Four historic Row Houses, Capitol Hill

  “I was skeptical of staging. But, my inexpensive, vacant investment property had been on the market over 90 days with no interest. Patricia convinced me that staging it would make the difference, and she was so right. It sold the first week! I’m totally sold on staging now.”

  D. Marshall, Owner Investor, Single Family Home, Hyattsville, MD