If you had to guess the percentage of homes that need to be staged before being listed on the market, what might that number be?
“I would actually say, believe it or not, that staging is necessary all of the time. One hundred per cent of listings need to be staged,” says REALTOR® Kaleb Streeter. “That’s because it’s the definition that fools people.”
When some people think of staging, they think of removing certain pieces of furniture and bringing other furniture in. Other people understand it to be just rearranging what you already have.
“But staging is actually a collective term to describe the process of prepping a home for photos—that’s all it is. It’s like brushing your hair before you take a picture: you’re staging yourself to show yourself at your best. Even when you pose in a picture or smile, it’s staging. You’re basically showcasing your home to its fullest and highest potential,” he says.
Of course, there can be rare exceptions. Some homeowners might have successfully staged their homes themselves. But very few homes are photo ready. There’s a big difference between a home lived in and a home prepped for sale.
Staging is therefore necessary all the time, because it isn’t what we think it is. It’s like putting the lipstick on the house before any pictures are taken.
What to expect
There isn’t a typical amount of staging work that’s involved, as it can vary wildly from home to home.
“The goal for photos is ‘less is more’ because what a house looks like through the lens of the camera and through the human eye is totally different,” explains Streeter. “You’ve probably heard people say, ‘This house is so much smaller than it looks’ or ‘They made the rooms look so much bigger than they are’. In order to capture all the angles, we use wide-angle lenses when taking photos; unfortunately that does skew the dimensions. It’s not designed to mislead but simply to capture as much of the room as possible.”
In some cases, homes can be staged by a REALTOR®, if that’s something the agent feels comfortable doing. More often, though, it involves a three-stage process with a staging professional, which includes an initial consultation visit, a hands-on visit and a final touch-up about an hour before the photos are taken, to ensure that everything is just right.
One of the biggest and most important tasks is decluttering. This means taking your toothbrush off the bathroom counter, removing knickknacks throughout the home and trying to eliminate as many items on the kitchen counters as possible. “Your dining room table doesn’t need a printer, four stacks of folders and last year’s tax documents,” says the agent. “Just a vase with some flowers, even completely empty is fine.”
The Streeter Team doesn’t pass any staging costs on to their clients; it’s included in their fee-for-service.
The details
Homeowners can stage their homes themselves or a professional stager can do the work. Often, it’s a combination of both. A stager might come by and do a 90-minute walk-through consultation with you, then the REALTOR®’s team would leave you with a detailed booklet that outlines a room-by-room blueprint of exactly what you need to do to prep your home for photos.
If you need assistance, the stager can return for a second visit that is more hands-on; she’ll actually implement the changes that were recommended. Sometimes this involves buying new towels, flowers or wall décor, which is hung using Command™ Picture Hanging Strips. It’s these smaller details that can make your home stand out and shine.
The Streeter Team works with an exclusive staging partner. If there’s not much to do, the stager will often simply leave a list of recommendations and the homeowner will execute them. Certainly, the option for assisted staging is always there.
To learn more about Streeter Team’s listing service offering, check out Streeter Team's website or call 705-323-9212.