-- A Professional Atlanta Home Stager Answers the What, Why, When, and Price for Home Staging --

What is Home Staging? Home staging is the art of presenting

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key rooms, and placement of furniture and accessory pieces in those rooms with the intent to draw general appeal to a home for sale for the most potential buyers. Home stagers design unique staging plans for a home based on the potential buyer for the demographics of that home's location, price range, and floor plan. The intent of the home staging strategy is to actually help the home buyer be able to visualize comfortably and happily living in the home.

A professional home stager will be able to highlight the home's best features for the potential buyers. In addition, professional home staging will demonstrate livable solutions for floor plan negatives and awkward spaces. An inviting home atmosphere is created with home staging as well as a strong emphasis toward creating a positive first impression of the home for sale.

Why have your home staged? The proven results of professional home staging are reduced market time, and realizing top dollar for the property. Home staging is a new trend in the real estate arena, and it is here to stay. If it's a buyers market, such as our current market, staged homes have less market time than homes that have not been professionally home staged. If our economy has us in a seller's market, a professionally staged home encourages multiple offers and a higher offer price.

For the more veteran home sellers it is important to point out that the Internet's availability of home photos for all homes for sale have increased the need for displaying cosmetic sophistication of a property. To put is quite simply, if a home does not show well in the on-line photos; physical showings will be limited. All the way back to ancient times, land has always been the prized commodity for ownership, trade, and wealth. Because 80% of all home buyers now begin their search on line, for the first time in the history of man, property must be "marketed" in order to return wealth. Home staging has become that marketing tool. Home staging is today's key criteria stimulating physical showings from the homes buyer's first impression gained via Internet viewings.

The other powerful attribute of hiring a professional home stager when marketing your home is the stager's expertise in targeting the best possible second impression, which of course in today's world of the Web, is generally the physical viewing of the home, as earlier mentioned. For example, you may have a wonderful presentation of colorful collector plates appropriately displayed on built-in bookshelves in your great room. The home buyer tours the home, admires your collection and mentally notes the built-ins. After leaving the home the buyer wonders where the fireplace was. Was it in the room with the plates? Now your home is being remembered as the home with the plates; not the home with the beautiful built-ins and custom woodwork framing out the large fireplace. A professional home stager will see changes needed that would not be expected. A professional home stager's trained expertise will know how to display your items in a way that accents your home, not your collections.

When should a home be staged? This is the simplest principal of professional home staging. Homes should be staged prior to listing. Stage, list, and sell. Once your home is listed and in the MLS Internet system, the pictures posted there can often become a permanent presentation on multiple home selling sites.

Secondly, if you anticipate your home going on the market in the next year or two, it is recommended that you hire a home stager for a consultation and advice regarding possible home upgrades that will be economical, paint color choices, landscaping ideas, etc. A home stager can help you prioritize your action list so that you can pace yourself throughout the process while feeling confident that your home equity will stay intact.

How much does home staging cost? The cost to stage a home depends on the services required. Each quote is custom as each home is unique, and each home seller's needs are unique. For example, the cost to hire a home stager to begin the process of staging your home working with your own items would start somewhere between $150 and $200. The more staging services, furniture, and accessories needed, the more the cost. In other words, if a home stager can come into your home and work with your furnishing and accessories to improve your home presentation it will cost much less than if the home you are marketing is vacant and needing furnishing as well as accessories. And, often, it is somewhere in between. Thus, custom quotes are fundamental to the business of home staging.

"Remember, you are selling a HOUSE, a property; space. Disassociate yourself. When you buy a computer, you buy a shell that has the space to hold the items you want and need, software that makes it functional, and tutorials that demonstrate how it is best used. That is what Home Staging does for a house! A potential home buyer is shopping for a house; functional space that they can make their home. That's what they need to see."

"Every time I step into a home to perform home staging, my goal is to assure my clients that staging can and should be fun. Home staging is not decorating and has nothing to do with personal taste or the convenience of day to day living. Home staging has everything to do with marketing features of the home to attract potential buyers. Home staging is a tool to help the Realtor® and the home seller advertise the home in a way that produces interested buyers from the internet and to increase the number of agent showings."

Karen Dembsky, Peachtree Home Staging President

Home staging, sometimes called home fluffing, home enhancement or home redesigning is the art of decorating a home to appeal to the most potential buyers. A professional home stager will bring out your house’s best features, downplay the negatives and create an inviting atmosphere. The result of professional home staging is reduced market time, and realizing top dollar for the property. • Home enhancements to best market your home! -- When you list your home with your real estate agent, take multiple pictures of every room so they can be properly displayed on the many Internet sites buyers flock to. According to the 2006 National Association of REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 80% of all home buyers used the Internet as an information source. A staged home presents the opportunity to market the home with captivating pictures that reveal the home’s best features and design. Staged homes generate more showings because of the dynamic presentations with marketing! • Home enhancements to sell your home quickly! -- It’s a proven fact. Staged homes sell faster than homes that haven’t been staged. When Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Los Altos, Calif., looked at nearly 2,800 properties in eight U.S. cities in 2004, they found that the staged homes, on average, sold in half the time than the non-staged homes. A potential buyer makes a buying decision within moments of entering a home. A staged home is designed to make that grand first impression to the most people. • Home enhancements to sell your home for extraordinary profit! -- Research proves that staged homes sell for more. The NAR (National Association of Realtors) statistics indicate that staged homes sold for an average of 6.9 percent to10 percent more than the listing price. Staging a home costs much less than having to reduce your selling price.

Home Staging is different from interior decorating. Interior decorating is designing a home to personal tastes. Home staging should leave a home looking desirable to a mass audience. Professional home staging will eliminate distractive décor from the home, such as personal effects. Furniture will be rearranged to be the most functional; rooms will display appropriate and most useful items. Rooms will be strategically decorated to visually enhance their size.