Clutter & Décor We encourage sellers to try to de-personalize their home (within reason) and especially de-clutter. This doesn’t mean you have to remove every spec of yourselves from your home, but the goal is for the buyer to be able to picture themselves in the home and not be focused on looking at the seller’s family pictures and vintage teaspoon collection. When a seller is trying to pack up to move, there are sometimes boxes and piles around. Again, this is where having the home properly staged and ready to market before going live in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) can be beneficial. You want buyers to focus on the house, not your stuff. Agents know when buyers are close to making an offer when one of them says “Honey, I can see the couch right here and the TV on that wall!” At that point they are envisioning their life and their belongings in their (hopefully) new home. Ideal Furniture Placement Rearranging a room can have a huge effect on how a room feels. When rooms “feel good”, they feel like HOME. If you have large, overstuffed furniture, although it may be comfy, it can make a room feel smaller. Dainty, fragile furniture in a large room with high ceilings can make a home feel overwhelming or sparce. An agent familiar with staging may recommend storing overly large or unique furniture and switching it out with pieces that fit the scale of the room better. In addition, we often don’t use rooms in our homes for their intended purposes. If you are using your dining room as an office, an experienced stager may recommend that you move the desk and computer to a bedroom for the showing period so buyers can picture a dining room set up. What if you don’t have a dining room set? This is where some agents have recommended digital staging. In one home, there was an awkward area between rooms that every potential buyer said “what would you even put there?” With a little help from digital staging, the agent was able to digitally place a small side table and two occasional chairs to create a sitting area. Not long after the digitally staged photos went live, the sellers finally received an offer which led to a sale. Ready, set, photoshoot We live in a very instant gratification society. People want pictures and videos – now. Heather Drury, Realtor® notes: “Most home buyers begin their journey by searching online. Attractive, clear photos help them decide which properties to view and consider”. Heather is correct, we lay in our beds at night and surf websites looking for “the one”. Even with homes flying off the shelves, sellers need to appeal to the widest group of potential buyers. If buyers can only get in to see one or two houses that day, sellers want one to be theirs! Good photos, video tours and even digital staging can help for this. Juliana says that “I always hire a professional photographer for my listings and I believe that a new listing should never go “live” until the pictures are in”. Dawn Jerles, Associate Broker / Realtor® CB Free Realty O: 478-987-0763 C: 478-396-4697 dawnjerles@cbfreerealty.com Good drone photography can help a buyer understand the layout of a lot! Photo credit: Hunter Branham
17 Publizr Home