How To Explain the Value of Home Staging to a Seller - Especially when a COST is involved!

I'm always surprised when speaking to a Realtor to hear 'Well it's expensive to Stage' so I wanted to take a moment to help Realtors understand that Home Staging rarely if ever costs a seller anything.  Let's start with the obvious.

1.  Home Staging has proven to have a return on investment in many surveys and reports.  Just ask the people at 20/20 or CBS News or the countless others who report the findings.  You can also turn to Home Gain for surveys conducted with Realtors who found that Home Staging provides a 150% return on investment as well as sell in less time.  Just think, a seller can actually make money with this smart selling strategy.

2.  Sellers receive more for a staged home verses an unstaged home.

3.  Staged Homes sell in less time.

Despite all of these important facts let's really break it down to plain numbers, after all numbers don't lie and they go a long way in getting to the point.  So here are some numbers you can chew on.

Let's say a Home Staging is as expensive as $10,000.00.  WOW!... your thinking, that's a lot.  Not really, but stay with me anyway.  Let's start with a 1M dollar listing.  Don't worry, I'll take that list price down in just a bit.

The mortgage payment on $10,000.00 with today's current interest rates is about $58.16

So we have all studied the Art of Negotiating and this is where a Realtors value can truly shine.  Let's say your the listing agent returning a counter offer to a buyer's agent.  Let's say the offer price first placed by the buyer on the 1M dollar listing is only 800K.  In this market, that is likely.  So back and forth they go, seller and buyer making their way to a meeting of the mind.  Now there's a much smaller spread between asking and offering.  Do you think it's possible the buyer, who obviously wants this home, is really going to march off and discontinue negotiating if a seller stands firm on his final offer plus the 10K he paid for staging.  Not likely, when you can use your negotiating skills to convince the buyer's agent that $58.16 a month should never be a deal breaker.

So let's say the house is worth less then 1M and maybe it's 800K or 700K or 400K or 300K or 200K.....you get the point.  Is $58.16 per month going to break a buyer's bank.  Of course home staging for properties of lesser value is equally less in cost.  Let's say with the 300K dollar listing the cost is 5K.  The monthly mortgage payment for 5K at today's interest rates is $29.08 and again, it's not likely that this will cause a buyer to not purchase the home.

So let's now get to the real point.

1.  Staged Homes Sell for more then homes that are not and that's a fact.

2.  Staged Homes sell in less time saving a seller monthly expenditures and that's a fact.

3.  Sellers can include the price of the staging during negotiations with the help of their skilled Realtor.

How expensive is Home Staging?  Well, more to the point how expensive is it not to stage a home?  A whole bunch more!

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