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Does Staging a Home Really Impact Your Home's Sale Price?
Remember when you walked into a "lived in" home? Or even into a perfectly clean, but un-staged home? How did that make you feel? Like you couldn't see yourself in it?
Which home would you rather buy?
Without Staging
With Staging
That's the way most Buyers in this area feel when they walk into an un-staged home. This is especially true in the East Bay Metro Areas of Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda... where about 90% of the homes are staged. Buyers these days want "move-in ready," fresh and new looking homes (even though they're not new). To put this in perspective which would you pay more for, a used car that looks used or one that looks detailed and new?
In the East Bay, how a home looks has become vitally more important than structural fixes - unless it's a super fixer. In fact, a staged home, freshly painted, and prepped with minor kitchen and bath updates sells for 10% to 20% more on average than an un-staged home. If the average sale price in Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda is $800k, that translate into about $80K to $160K more in sale price. Do the math; is it worth spending $15K to get $80K or more?
This becomes even more important when you stop to think that 99% of Buyers in Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda start their search on the internet. They scour listings just looking at the photos and visually decide which homes they're going to go see. Looking at the above photos, which would you rather visit?
No wonder a staged home spends half the time on the market as an un-staged home, according to the Real Estate Staging Association.
And even the National Association of Realtors (NAR) backs that up. According to their stats, if a seller spends an average of 1%-3% of their home's selling price on staging, that minor cost alone generates a return of 8%-10% in sale price.
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