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What Is Your Home Telling Potential Buyers?

By
Home Stager with Shows Great Home Staging and Web Solutions

Do you know what your home could be telling potential buyers behind your back? Our homes speak to home buyers in many ways.

Before I was a home stager, I was a REALTOR for many years.  When I first started selling real estate, long before Buyer Agency was available in our area, we were allowed to post in the mls why a home was being offered for sale.  It clearly stated in the listing "death", "divorce", "relocation", just to name a few.  When Buyer Agency became available, this information was removed from the listings yet buyers continued to ask the question... "Why are they selling"?  It became sort of a game tor me to go through a home and try to figure out why it was being sold. 

Below are just a few things your home could be saying to potential buyers:

 

  • "My owners are getting a divorce" - are there empty closets and empty rooms? 

  • "My owners are having financial problems" - home is in disrepair and lacking routine maintenance.  There may be stacks of bills laying around.  I always recommend that homeowners make sure to keep their mail and bills locked away while their homes are on the market.  This is especially important with identity thief being such a huge problem these days.

  • "I am too small" - closets are overflowing, too much furniture, too much stuff everywhere. 
  • "My owner died"- home is in the process of being packed up.  There may be a few things still in the house, just enough to let a potential buyer know that the owner "has moved on" and did not need to take their stuff where they were going.
  • "My owner is in a nursing home" - home has been left just the way it was.  Older furniture and accessories indicating an older person may have lived there.  Calendar pages have not been turned for months. 
  • "My owner is having medical problems" - refrigerators may have doctor's appointment reminder cards posted on the front, medicine is sitting on kitchen counters, other medical apparatus may be sitting around.

A professional stager can help you prepare your home for the market to make sure that it does not give away too much informations as to why you are selling.  Homes that project a warm and inviting feeling when home buyers enter are much more likely to sell than homes that are giving off negative vibes.

Wanda Richards

Shows Great Home Staging and Web Solutions
Web Site www.showsgreat.biz
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We are a full service staging and virtual tour company serving Southwest and Central Virginia since 2008.
Proud nominee for RESA'S Rookie Stager of the Year in 2009.

 

 

Comments(4)

Kathy Streib
Cypress, TX
Home Stager/Redesign

Wanda- so true.  Buyers are always wondering why a home is for sale.  By staging a home and making it appeal to a broad range of buyers you take away the focus on the "why" a home is for sale and place it on "why I want this home".

May 03, 2010 02:41 PM
Wanda Richards
Shows Great Home Staging and Web Solutions - Roanoke, VA
Shows Great Home Staging

Thanks Kathy.  Great point.

May 05, 2010 10:59 PM
Anna Dovger
Add Value Home Staging LLC, 281-704-6607 - The Woodlands, TX
Home Staging -The Woodlands, TX

Great post. By guessing who lives in the house seller loosing those 7 min that he has to make decision on if he is buying this house. Let's help him to make that decision and focus on best features of the house.

May 19, 2010 09:59 AM
C. Bartch
Newark, OH

Wanda you are so right a home does show it's personality/circumstances by how it's presented!

Jul 17, 2010 09:32 AM